The Seventh Commandment

by Tom Fox

  Angelina noticed that the last word, ‘norms’, bore a tinge of resentment along with it.

  ‘For my parents, this was normal, as for their parents it had been normal. And as for me, well, it became just that. Normal.’ The resentment again. ‘And nothing more.’

  ‘Ben, I don’t see what this has to do with—’

  ‘But it never really did it for me,’ he continued, ignoring the interruption. ‘The scripted services, aesthetically beautiful as they were. The formalised ritual. The career clerics looking for the next leg up the religiously corporate ladder.’

  Angelina watched as Ben’s face flushed with the memories. This was clearly territory that touched him deeply, and the pain was visible in his eyes.

  ‘By the time I’d found my way into the academic world, wonderfully detached from the nonsense of modern life, I’d grown completely disillusioned with it – with my religious background. I stopped going to Mass. I stopped saying my prayers, forgot about my rosary. And it didn’t bother me, leaving those things behind. They were never really . . . me.’ He hesitated, gazing not so much at Angelina as through her.

  ‘But something else gradually overtook me. Something I hadn’t been expecting. A longing. A desire, somewhere inside of me. I can’t explain it, Angelina. A desire for something more. God, I loved my work – I still do. It drives me. But as much as I gave myself to it, as much as I ascended through one scholarly circle to the next, I still felt this emptiness inside.’

  An unease began to grow in Angelina’s stomach. There was an emotional intimacy to Ben’s self-confessed religiosity that went beyond stolen glances of bare flesh and muscle. He was laying open his interior world. It felt – uncomfortable.

  But it was also beginning to grow redolent of so much religious-speak she’d heard before. Heard, and never liked.

  ‘I was craving something,’ Ben continued, ‘even though I wasn’t sure what it was. Something that would breathe a little life into me. And then, one afternoon,’ his posture opened up as Ben’s tone suddenly shifted, ‘I was walking through the Quartiere Prenestino-Labicano and I chanced upon an unassuming red-brick building. I don’t know what drew me in. It could only have been divine providence.’

  Angelina groaned, failing to keep her innate revulsion from showing. Divine providence. It was a phrase she didn’t expect and didn’t want to hear from a respected academic.

  ‘I walked into the Church of St Paul of the Cross that day, and my whole world changed.’ Ben’s features brightened with the memory. ‘I’d never heard of the Catholic Charismatic Movement, never even really known about charismatic movements at all except by hearsay, but that afternoon I found a faith utterly unlike anything I’d experienced before.’

  It was Angelina’s turn to straighten her posture, suddenly having more to focus on than just generic religious sentiment.

  ‘The Church of St Paul of the Cross?’

  Ben nodded, his features still beaming, but Angelina’s stomach squeezed again. A memory surfaced quickly, and it set her on edge.

  The video she’d partially watched online downstairs, of the zealous young man reciting prophecy into a camera and predicting that plagues would befall the city – he’d been affiliated with the Charismatic Catholic Church of St Paul of the Cross. She’d only heard of them a few times before – a Pentecostal-style subset of Catholicism that believed in personal inspiration, charismatic revival and all sorts of other things Angelina couldn’t stomach. They’d never been much liked by mainstream Catholics, either; and that, at least, Angelina could understand.

  ‘Ben, this is absurdity. That group is insane!’

  He shook his head, as if accustomed to this response to the nature of his faith.

  ‘Reality can appear insane to those who don’t understand it,’ he answered. ‘Our church is unusual, I’ll give you that. Especially in this day and age, and in this context.’ He motioned around them, signalling beyond the hotel walls to the ancient religious formality of the city in which they lived. ‘But what I discovered there, was a religion that is alive, Angelina. Not dead words, but a living faith.’

  ‘Enough, Ben!’ She cut him off in frustration. ‘I know the spiel. I’ve heard it from a hundred religious fanatics before.’

  ‘You’re not a believer, then, I take it?’ The question was asked without any hint of accusation.

  ‘I’m a firm believer in sanity over nonsense,’ Angelina answered. She normally wasn’t so hostile to those who believed in one religion or another, was usually more objective and reserved, but at this moment her emotions were frayed. ‘I’m a believer in what can actually be known, as opposed to what must be blindly believed.’

  Ben stared into her. ‘Some things can be known that go beyond what you might be able to explain.’

  Angelina shook her head. ‘This group, Ben . . . Charisma? Prophecy? I expected more of you. You’re a scholar, a rational man! You know enough about history to know that religions come and go with the cultures that invent them – hardly someone I’d have expected to be an adherent to a faith that spoon-feeds you “revelations” and tells you you can talk to God.’

  ‘It isn’t like that,’ he answered. ‘But . . .’ His voice dropped off.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Because of everything that’s happening, it’s important that you understand what it is, even if you don’t accept it.’

  There was no chance of Angelina accepting anything that approximated what she knew of charismatic Christianity, but she wanted to know how this group was related to the tablet and the series of circumstances overtaking them.

  ‘I’m not the right person to explain,’ Ben finally added. ‘It’s better that you see for yourself.’ Then, looking straight into her eyes, ‘It’s better that you talk to Father Alberto.’

  Their conversation went on for a further twenty minutes before they reached a point where Angelina had no more questions that Ben could answer sufficiently, and he had no more to share than he felt he could without her seeing for herself the church to which he belonged, and learning how it was connected to the prophecies befalling them all.

  Angelina, worn out and dispirited by the whole conversation, agreed to go and meet the priest at the head of Ben’s church. Both of them, however, knew they couldn’t make a move until morning came. The church was closed, transit at night was slow, and if nothing else their clothes wouldn’t be ready before dawn, and travelling through the city in hotel bathrobes was hardly a realistic option.

  Beyond that, they were both exhausted. The day had more than depleted even their adrenaline-spiked energy reserves, and their conversation had drained their emotions. They needed rest, and they were in the right place to get it.

  ‘I’ll take the right side of the bed, if you don’t mind,’ Angelina announced once they’d decided it was time to stop talking and sleep. She lifted up the thick duvet and slid underneath. Ben once again looked uncomfortable with the sleeping arrangement, but exhaustion beat down any protests. Saying nothing, he slipped beneath the covers of the other side of the bed. They both continued to wear the thick bathrobes, neither having any other options.

  And so they lay, in a hotel room neither of them could afford, robed beneath the covers at the conclusion of a day of gunfire, kidnap and plagues, hoping that sleep would come and tomorrow would bring something different.

  50

  The next morning, before sunrise

  Residential prayer meeting

  House church, Via dei Zeno

  The room was dimly lit, a traditional urban front room illuminated with two floor lamps, its furnishings unremarkable. A few extra chairs had been brought in from the dining room to add seating in addition to the sofa and rocking recliner. They were arranged, as usual, in as close to a circle as the space and furniture would allow.

  It was nothing like the bright space of their public worship, but the house church setting was one that Thomás loved all the same. Like all members of the parish, he belonged not only to
the main community which met for Masses and praise, but also to a small local ‘stake’, as they called it, which met together each weekday morning for fifteen minutes of prayer before they all went off to work. Even on days like today, when a full service would follow at the main church later in the morning for those able to attend, few ever missed the house church sessions as a start to their day.

  On the coffee table in the midst of their circle lay the whole revelation. Its various elements had been known to the community for months, but always in bits and pieces, as revelation usually came. In the midst of the ecstatic states achieved during true worship, when the Spirit moved within the hearts of men and women and stirred them to speak with the voice of angels and not of men, shouts had emerged that gave voice to the prophecy in various utterances. They came in the home sessions, they came in the community meetings. One man had spoken of the river. A woman’s voice had revealed the colour would be of blood. And the other elements had come to them, too – night, fog, chaos, and all the rest – all had surfaced from prophetic lips at one point or another.

  But now they had it all. It was concrete. The tablet that had been discovered had conveyed into their present a verification of their experience, engraved in a relic of the ancient past. Thomás was shaken to his depths by the realisation of what that meant. Something so ancient, which precisely matched the revelations God had been giving them in their heights of spiritual ecstasy . . . it was confirmation. Absolute confirmation of what he realised he’d long known to be true. The charismata of faith were real. Man really did commune with God. Truths as ancient as the world itself could be met and known – and the God who had spoken in the past was speaking in the present.

  He was speaking of their future.

  ‘This was received from friends.’ The calming, sure voice was that of Giulio Selmone, a stock trader who owned the house and who was the appointed leader of their stake’s weekday sessions. A moment ago, Thomás had helped him distribute the photocopies they’d received from the church office, with Father Alberto’s blessing, the evening before. ‘The full revelation of the tablet discovered in the mud,’ he continued. ‘The full revelation of . . . everything.’

  They all began to read. The text was a translation, of course, presenting the ancient prophecy in their modern tongue.

  Their faces lit the room as they took in its contents.

  Giulio Selmone turned to an older man at his right. ‘Has our message been received by those on the outside?’

  The older man was the church’s custodian – the man called Laurence who had helped Thomás yesterday when the first news of the prophecies coming true had been his to pass along to their priest. Laurence had been with them for the past few months, being assigned to Thomás’s stake at the same time he took up his menial job in the church, and his kindness and gentility had quickly rendered him a beloved new recruit. In years he far surpassed most other members of the church, and his openness to revelation and the will of God was nothing short of extraordinary for a man ‘of a previous generation’. An inspiration to everyone. Father Alberto, who was roughly Laurence’s contemporary, had taken him closely under his wing, his fondness for the man openly showing.

  ‘I’m told that people all through the city have heard our call to action,’ Laurence answered. His old eyes surveyed the others in the room. ‘It is a receptive populace, especially given the signs at work before them. Though as to exactly how many have heard, I may not be of the right generation to know those sorts of details.’ He smiled, and the others did too. ‘But Thomás was the one to give our message voice. I am sure he knows.’ The custodian inclined his head kindly in Thomás’s direction.

  He felt a surge of pride and leaned forward. ‘We recorded the messages as Father Alberto and Laurence directed us,’ he answered, acknowledging that the older man, though technologically inept, had been one of the most receptive hearts to God’s voice. ‘It went live online about an hour after we recorded it. So far we have over seven hundred thousand views.’

  He sat back. Pride would urge him to say more, but humility was a virtue that lent itself to silence.

  ‘We are warning them,’ Laurence continued, ‘even if they do not wish to be warned.’

  ‘The world may be blind,’ their group leader announced, ‘but it’s eager to receive our visions of what will come.’

  Silence overtook the group again.

  Finally, Thomás asked the question that was on all their minds. ‘And what is that? What’s going to come next?’

  ‘You’ve seen the prophecy as well as I,’ Giulio answered calmly. He let his eyes fall back down to the paper, and seven other sets of eyes followed suit. He slid his finger down the lines of the complete translation, finally stopping at a single line.

  Thomás strained to see where he had stopped, and when he had a bearing on the right spot, found it on his own copy of the text. He read, and re-read. The words were there, and he saw them clearly – but he didn’t understand.

  The group broke up moments later, dismissed by a nod from their stake leader and a few words of prayer for the day ahead. Thomás walked quietly down the steps outside the front door and turned down the street. He wouldn’t go into work this morning. He would make his way towards their main church to participate in the Wednesday morning Mass and hymns of praise. Today, he felt like he needed it.

  He kept the translation in his hands. He read the line again.

  And again.

  But understanding didn’t dawn. What kind of plague was . . . fog?

  51

  Outside

  It began in the belly of the city.

  The early risers among the citizens of Rome had awoken in worry. Yesterday had brought fear. The night had elevated it. Now, in the silence and mist of the early morning, foreboding hung over the city.

  Something was coming. They could feel it.

  And it terrified them.

  So they returned to the text that was making the rounds, predicting woes to come. They were looking ahead. They were looking at the impossibilities of their fears.

  The one place they were not looking, was down.

  Down, beneath the streets, beneath the pavements, to the rumbling steel arteries and vessels of a city continually pulsing with life.

  So when those arteries began to rumble, they rumbled unobserved and unheard. Cars propelled by anxious drivers moved along the roadways; nervous feet tapped against cobblestone and concrete. Morning Masses for calm were sung in glorious cathedrals, and coffee brewed in a million half-ounce shots to provide its longed-for rush of the familiar. The normal.

  All the while, the pressure of Rome’s underground arteries grew – monumental, ferocious – until the plague gained its full momentum and reached the threshold that would transform prophecy into reality.

  And then the third plague burst forth.

  It burst through sewer grates, through manhole covers, through air vents and regulator valves. It seeped through the edges of modern plumbing and burst the rings of the older sort.

  It came from everywhere, unfurled itself – everywhere.

  And the words of the prophecy were fulfilled in the midst of the wary people:

  ‘Then shall come the fog, which clouds the minds of the children of fallen men.’

  52

  Hotel Majestic

  Angelina awoke abruptly. Sleep had hit her with an overpowering swiftness once she’d relaxed her body – if not her mind – into the plush covers and inviting mattress. It had come like possession: a force that overtook her, rather than gradually sidled up and made friends. Her sleep had been filled with dreams of prophets and rivers, bullets and the frailties of faith, until it left her as abruptly as it had come.

  As she lifted her head from the pillows compressed beneath it, her hair was still wet.

  ‘How long was I out?’ she asked with a groggy voice, sensing movement from across the room. Ben was already up.

  ‘You slept for almost four hours,’ he answere
d, ‘which isn’t bad, considering.’

  Angelina blinked open her eyes and let them adjust to the light. Ben stood a few metres from the foot of the bed, dressed in clothes that were crisp, clean rejuvenations of those he’d worn yesterday.

  As she breathed in, Angelina’s nostrils filled with a swirl of welcome scents. Coffee, eggs, toast.

  ‘I thought we could both do with something to eat,’ Ben said, taking note of her expression. ‘Sit yourself up, it’ll be easier.’

  Surprised, but drawn in by the scents and the sudden awareness of a ravenous hunger, Angelina pulled herself forward, readjusted the pillows and sat upright on the bed. A moment later, Ben had laid a silver tray across her lap. An omelette dripping with melted cheese was on a plate at its centre, surrounded by a fan of sliced melon and berries, a rack of brown toast beside a tiny pot of jam, a bowl of purplish yoghurt, and a cup already filled with steaming black coffee.

  ‘I hope they’re things you eat,’ Ben said, stepping away. ‘I didn’t know your diet, so I just guessed.’

  ‘It’s perfect,’ she answered, going straight for the coffee. She couldn’t think of the last time she’d actually had a meal – had it been breakfast the day before? – and at that moment would have eaten anything within arm’s reach.

  An enormous forkful of omelette was in her mouth a second later, the flavours milling on her tongue.

  ‘Did you get some sleep, too?’ she asked around the food.

  ‘A couple of hours,’ Ben answered. ‘Adrenaline, you know. Didn’t allow for much more.’

  Angelina understood perfectly well. She dunked a corner of a slice of toast into the jam and added a bite to the other flavours merging in her mouth.

  ‘Our laundry was hanging outside the door when room service brought up the food half an hour ago,’ Ben added. ‘I hung your things in the wardrobe. I hope you don’t mind, I already ate without you.’