by Rob Preece
Ivy shook her head. “It means Holy Wisdom. Which might also be the third person in the trinity. We've gained wisdom in our flight and we've made a network of friends and allies. Now we've got to figure out a way to transform our knowledge into power."
Sure. That sounded logical and it sounded easy. But it was easier to believe that knowledge was power when you weren't facing helicopter gunships, armed only with the certainty of your convictions.
"The Foundation has effective control over the U.S. military, so we've got to think like guerillas, attacking where they aren't, seeking the soft spots in their defenses. Obviously, the two of us aren't going to attack them militarily."
"Two?” Father Paulo said. “But there are already the four of us. And you told us of so many others who have helped you."
Ivy frowned. “Keep thinking, Zack, but I don't think we're quite on the right track. We came to Venice for a reason. Why here? Sure, it was great to meet with Father Paulo and Father Francis, but we could have met with priests in Turkey or Greece. We need to know why the Priestess sent us here."
"Maybe she likes the canals."
"Yeah. And maybe she thought it would be handy if we crossed half the world just to hand the Cross over to her enemies. But I don't think either of those is true. She sent us to Byzantium to pick up the Veil. So, why did she send us to Venice?"
* * * *
The three men were getting a bit sulky and Ivy couldn't blame them. She'd asked for their plans and then, when they'd come up with any, she'd shot them down. Still, she couldn't help thinking that they were missing something fundamental.
From the guidebook she'd studied while she and Zack had explored the canals of this ancient city, she knew Venice had been a mostly uninhabited swamp until around the fall of the Western Roman Empire. A number of Romans had founded the city then to escape from the German tribes who overran Italy during that period. So, there couldn't be anything truly ancient here. Nothing dating back before the Christian era.
On the flipside, though, although the old city of Byzantium had dated back to the pre-Christian era, the Veil hadn't been hidden there until the 1400s when the Turks finally overran that last citadel of the two-thousand-year-old Roman Empire. Something old could have been brought to Venice in the fifteen hundred years since its founding.
"We were sent to Byzantium to pick up the Veil, so maybe we're here to pick up something else. Think about what could be hidden here. What is Venice famous for?"
"They've got the relics of Saint Mark,” Zack said.
"Anything else?” Ivy didn't think an ancient skeleton, even that of one of the Apostles, would provide the kind of power they needed to confront the Foundation.
"Who knows what loot is hidden around the city?” Father Paulo suggested. “We were a merchant nation, but also a nation of pirates and thieves. But for all that is known, Venetian merchants may have looted the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, Kali's strangling cord, and the Ka'bah stone, in addition to the known treasures."
"Which of those would help?"
Father Paulo shrugged. “I'm not saying any of them are here, just that Venice is a hodgepodge of ancient stuff gathered over the centuries by Venetian noblemen intent on proving that they were among the wealthiest and most artistically inclined of their world. It wasn't for nothing that the Renaissance started here in Venice, you know."
"I thought it started because of all the Greeks fleeing the conquest of Constantinople and bringing their scientific and artistic skills with them,” Zack offered.
Father Francis shook his head. “A very narrow-minded reading of history."
"Okay, is there any particular place where the loot would be?” Ivy asked. “I read something about the Cairo Museum having millions of uncatalogued treasures. Does Venice have anything like that?"
"Not museums,” Father Paulo said. “Just the city itself. And the mainland too, of course."
"But I thought—"
"When the city grew rich, noble Venetians competed by building palaces on the mainland."
"So, we've not only got to search the islands of Venice, we've got to search everywhere around it, too? All while the Foundation and Italian Police are everywhere in the city looking for us?"
"When you put it like that, it sounds like an impossible mission,” Father Paulo agreed.
"Can you think of a positive way to put it?"
"Perhaps it would be wise to consider prayer,” the priest said. “I have often found that, when I face impossible obstacles, the Lord shows me a way around them, through them, or simply moves them away."
"I've got nothing against prayer, Father,” Zack said. “But I'm thinking we're as outgunned in the prayer department as we are in more obvious weapons. I don't know how many members the Foundation has, but it's a sure bet they have more than four. And all of the ones we've met so far seem to be big on prayer. When they aren't trying to kill us, anyway."
"Prayer isn't an additive thing,” Father Paulo said. “The Lord does not set up scales comparing the numbers of prayers for one thing or another. If he did, we Christians would imitate the Tibetans with their prayer wheels to mechanize our offerings of thanks and requests for aid."
The obviousness of Father Paulo's suggestion almost took Ivy's breath away.
"You're right,” she said. “We've done what the Priestess told us to do. So, now we need to reconnect with her. Prayer is the traditional way of connecting to gods and the dead."
"I wasn't suggesting turning to paganism,” Father Paulo protested.
Ivy had tried not to confront that little problem in her own belief structure. If she was a Catholic and a Christian, how could she also be doing the bidding of a priestess of Ishtar? How like a priest to make her confront what she'd been trying to avoid.
Still, was there really a contradiction?
"Remember what you said. Based on the symbols on the Veil, we know that Mary may well have been a priestess of Ishtar or possibly even an avatar of Ishtar. And visions of Mary, messages from Mary are fully consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church.” She doubted that they would be consistent with the teachings of whatever strange breed of Christianity the Foundation pursued, but that wasn't her problem.
"We didn't conclude that Mary was a priestess,” Father Francis protested. “We were speaking hypothetically. We don't know that Mary ever owned this Veil. The church recognizes that not every purported relic is authentic."
"Hypothetical or not, you convinced me. It's at least possible that my priestess is consistent with the Catholic faith. You said we need supernatural help and I'm going to ask for it. Last time we needed supernatural help, we got it from the priestess. Now, that person might be Mary. She might be just about anyone else, for that matter, but she's given us the only guidance we've had so far. I'm going to ask for her help again."
"How are you going to contact her?” Zack wanted to know. “She hasn't been in touch for weeks now, since that first night when we just happened to stumble into a cave that had once been a temple to Ishtar."
"We didn't just stumble,” Ivy said. She hoped she sounded more confident than she really felt. “My second sight showed me the way, just as it has shown me the way here in Venice."
"But where should we go?"
She was glad that Zack had said ‘we.’ “We're already there. The Church of Mary of the Sailors is shot-through with the blue power of the Goddess. If she won't talk to me here, where would she?"
* * * *
Two days later, Ivy was beginning to wish she'd never asked that question.
Praying for a vision from the Goddess or her priestess had seemed like an obvious answer. They'd followed the priestess's orders, traveling through Turkey, Greece, and Italy and retrieving the Cross and Veil. Now they were ready for the next set of instructions. The only problem was, nothing was happening.
Ivy had lit candles, crossed herself with holy water, and gotten down on her knees and prayed for guidance from Mary, the Goddess, the Pries
tess, and from every saint and angel she could think of—male or female.
Praying hadn't hurt her any. From when she'd been a small child, prayer had always made her feel better, as if she'd been cleaned from the inside as well as on the outside. Two solid days praying made her feel cleaner than she'd ever felt before. But a good shiny feeling wasn't doing the job. The Foundation was still out there.
Father Paulo reported rumors from parishioners about Italian police officers accompanied by unidentified but definitely non-Italian men in civilian clothing who broke into homes and ransacked them, leaving the residents with wreckage to clean up. In a few cases, owners who had protested too much had vanished with the police. Few of those had returned and none of those who were missing could be found when their families hired attorneys to track them down. The Italian judiciary simply shrugged.
Overhead, American helicopters and fighter jets circled the city, creating a continual blanket of noise and of the crackling red-colored power that was seeking them out.
Venice had seemed like a refuge when they'd crossed Asia and Europe to reach it. Now, it felt like a trap. If she and Zack fled the city, with the Cross or without it, Ivy knew they would be detected, captured, and killed. If they stayed, eventually the Foundation would hunt them down, dig them out, and finish them that way.
It would take a miracle for them to survive the next week, and miracles were suddenly in short supply.
Ivy looked up from her prayer as a clutch of elderly Italian women shuffled into the church.
Several of them nodded to her. The priests had rounded her up a baggy dress that hung down to mid-calf and an oldfashioned wig. The combination made her look dumpy unattractive, and unthreatening. She'd spent enough time in the church over the past couple of days that she'd become a familiar figure. The women probably thought she'd been dumped at the altar by her handsome gondolier. All of which made her a lot more sympathetic than when they'd thought her a man-hungry tourist.
One of the women shoved a shopping bag at her, a couple of oranges and a small loaf of Italian bread poking through the mesh net of the sack.
"Grazie,” she responded. She hadn't eaten in better than twenty-four hours and was feeling a bit weak, but completely uninspired.
"Siete benvenuti,” the woman responded before taking her place on a pew.
A pair of altar boys led Father Paulo up the center aisle of the Church, one carrying a crucifix and the other swinging an incense burner around so wildly that it smacked into Ivy's knee.
"Ouch."
Father Paulo gave her a frown.
Well, he was right. Better for her to suffer a few bruises than to let everyone know she was American. Venice might be a big city, but its rumor mill was equal to that of the smallest small-town in America. And rumors could go two ways. She had to believe that the Foundation was tapped into it at least as well as were Fathers Paulo and Francis.
The altar boy gave her an apologetic smile, waved another cloud of incense at her, then headed toward the altar at the front of the church.
She inhaled deeply.
Church incense had always reminded her of funerals and long, boring sermons. Although Catholic churches always smelled of it, and now that she consciously thought of it, Orthodox churches had too, her brain tuned it out.
But when the altar boy had waved the burner under her nose, she'd caught a hint of memory.
When they'd stumbled onto the cave, there she'd smelled fire and smoke. Zack had argued that they'd been drugged, that her visions had been hallucinogenic rather than real. He'd come to believe this wasn't the case, that her second sight was as real as anything else on Earth, but that didn't mean that the smoke had been meaningless.
For the first time in days, Ivy had an idea of what to do next.
She sat through Father Paulo's service, listening to the rich baritone of his voice as he chanted the holy creeds of the Church.
Father Paulo didn't look like a man conflicted with doubts about his Church's teachings. And, Ivy realized, he probably wasn't. He wasn't a simple man. He'd graduated from college in Milan and spent several years in Africa working with AIDS patients before returning to his beloved Venice. By examining him through her second sight, Ivy saw that his faith was pure. He believed in a merciful God who would forgive anyone who asked for forgiveness in his Son's name, who tried to do what was right, and who truly repented his errors when he fell short of his ideals. Not for Father Paulo was any notion of a cold and calculating God ever-watching for that momentary misstep that would lead straight to hell.
Father Paulo was certain that God would forgive him if helping Ivy was a mistake, but his God would have a harder time forgiving the priest if he refused to help any who fled to his church as sanctuary.
She almost dozed off during his sermon, not what any priest would like to see, but she understood so little Italian that she could only wallow in the rich tones of his voice and the shining color of his faith.
After the sermon, as always, the women from his flock gathered around him bringing him small gifts of homemade food and seeking his attention, his blessing. Which he gave without stint.
"Anything?” he asked when the last of them had left and he'd sent the altar boys off to school.
"No."
The priest's shoulders drooped a bit. “I'm sorry, Ivy. Perhaps you were wrong. There may have been something else you were supposed to accomplish instead of just waiting for the messenger to return."
"Maybe. But the incense gave me an idea. When I saw the Priestess the first time, herbs were burning nearby. I think they may have been a part of opening the pathway."
Father Paulo frowned. “I cannot allow illegal drugs in my church. You do understand that, don't you?"
Ivy bristled. They were facing a group of angry men who were trying to bring about the end of the world in what Father Francis had called the ‘ultimate blasphemy’ but Father Paulo was worried about petty legalities.
Going non-linear wouldn't help, though.
"First things first, Father. I don't know that she was burning controlled substances. There's got to be someplace in Venice where I can look for herbs and spices. I've got to try to find something that matches what Zack and I experienced outside of Nineveh."
* * * *
Ivy was used to the farmers’ markets of Pittsburgh and expected something similar in Venice. Instead, Venice's open-air market spread across the city's narrow alleys and spilled onto barges and flat-bottomed outboards in the canals.
Thousands of people shouted at each other, bargained over prices, insulted merchandise, or sipped on espresso shots while watching the next generation try their skills. Here and there, pretty girls and college-aged boys on motor scooters zipped through the crowds, always at the point of hitting someone, but always managing to swerve out of the way at the last minute.
Other than the scooters and the occasional sound of an outboard motor, the market seemed little changed from what it would have been in late-medieval days when Venetian ships ruled the Mediterranean, and when Marco Polo returned to the city with his fabulous tales of Kublai Khan and the glories of China.
Ivy tried to use her second sight to identify the herbs she'd smelled outside of Mosul. As at the pier on the Grand Canal, though, the multitude of religious objects overwhelmed her senses.
"Does anything look familiar?” Zack asked. He was wearing one of Father Paulo's black suits with the Roman collar while Ivy had been made up to look like an aging woman doing her shopping.
"Nothing,” she admitted. “My senses are suffering from overload."
He sniffed the air then pointed down an alley. “I think the spices are this way."
She followed behind him, doing her best to ignore the submachinegun-toting policemen scattered through the market.
Sure enough, Zack's nose led them around a corner to a section of the market that she hadn't even guessed at.
Venice's herb and spice market featured people from around the world, most dressed
in traditional garb. Nutmeg, clove, garlic, cinnamon, cocoa, and the complex odors of pepper all clamored for her attention.
From behind tie-died curtains, accompanied by the soft gurgle of water pipes, wafted the sweet scent of hashish, painfully familiar to Ivy after the time she'd spent with Cejno.
From below the decks of small boats, she picked up even more unsavory exchanges—cocaine, opium, heroin.
Second only to Constantinople during the middle ages as the hotbed of illicit behavior and decadent wealth, Venice didn't seem to have slowed down a bit.
Zack chuckled. “That smells way too familiar."
Ivy followed his lead, away from the drug-infested corner of the market where they'd emerged, toward the sunlight and open stalls.
In the midst of the familiar, they found hundreds of herbs, fresh, dried, and powdered, that Ivy had never heard of—many with odors that made her wonder what had driven anyone to taste them in the first place.
Trusting her nose rather than her overwhelmed second sight, she made her way to a small stall marked with Arabic lettering.
She didn't recognize the herbs and couldn't pronounce the names of the spices when the Middle-Eastern-looking attendant, an attractive woman who was dressed in a pair of pants that could have been painted on her body and a top that plunged between more than ample breasts, repeated them. But Ivy recognized the scents. They'd found what they were looking for—and they didn't even look to be illegal.
"I'll bet she doesn't dress like that when she goes back to the old country,” Zack whispered.
"Keep your eyes to yourself, Father,” she reminded him.
"Hey. Even a priest can look."
She wasn't sure that was good theology but couldn't afford to attract attention by having an argument with him. Not with the Italian police swarming the city.
Instead, she paid the ridiculous price the woman demanded for small plastic bags of the herbs Zack's nose confirmed as being correct, using money Father Paulo had forced on her.
Sun streamed down on the city as they headed back toward their base in the Church of Mary of the Sailors. Despite the omnipresent police, the city had taken a festive atmosphere. A young couple skipped past them wearing a pair of feathered masks of the type that spoke of the Venetian carnival.