The Fallen

by Tarn Richardson

  At the top of the climb he took a right, the tyres screeching hard on the tarmac, cutting in front of an oncoming Maxwell Roadster. He turned left, feeling the rear of the car spin out and wrestling hard to claw back control, overtaking a horse-drawn cart in front of him on the inside and finding a lower gear to get some more traction beneath his tyres.

  A sudden explosion erupted from the left-hand side of the cab and Henry ducked beneath the steering wheel, staring into Isabella’s seat. He half expected to see the shuddering bleeding proof that she’d been hit, but instead she was leaning from the window, training the Mauser rifle she had taken from the rear seat at the pursuing cars for a second shot.

  “Isabella!” he cried, ploughing left into a narrow street strung with washing lines. They cut through, dragging wires and sheets behind them as they drove, Henry slipping down to first gear and turning hard right back onto the main road out of the city. “Do you know how to fire that thing?”

  She recalled her young years shooting rabbits in the fields at the back of her father’s home, before death had claimed him and the Church her. She prayed the rifle she now held was no different to the Vetterli rifle she used back then.

  “Just drive!” she shouted back, and Henry cranked second gear and checked over his shoulder once again. The cars behind were thirty feet away, quilts and pieces of clothing spinning into the night’s black air in their wake.

  Twenty feet and gaining.

  Now fifteen.

  Isabella released the magazine and checked the rounds inside. Three left. She thrust the metal canister home and leaned back out of the window, raising the rifle to her eye and pulling the trigger. The first round ricocheted harmlessly off the leading Ford’s front axle, the second taking the rear left tyre, the third the front right. The car ground to a sudden halt and twisted. A sickening crunch sounded from the base of the car and it seemed to split in two somewhere beneath the carriage, the Ford standing immobile in the middle of the road.

  “More rounds?” she shot back at Henry, holding out her open hand to him.

  “No more left,” he replied, veering left and then right to avoid a stranded pedestrian in the road. He turned the wheel left in his sweaty palms and roared onto another road, the remaining sedan screeching in hot pursuit. He jostled in his pocket. “Here,” he said, handing her a service revolver. “Take this.”

  She snatched it from him and leant back out of the window, her fingers clasped around the grip. She closed an eye and fired, twice. The sedan’s windscreen cracked and the Inquisitor driving took evasive action, jigging left and mounting the pavement, ploughing through tables and chairs, sending them spinning and careering into the late night air, diners scrambling for safety.

  More shooting sounded, now from Henry’s right, and his side window shattered into a million sparkling fragments, showering his face and clothes with needle-like splinters. Another black car roared up after the gunfire, battering the right side of Henry’s Fiat, almost throwing Isabella from her window. At once he braked, grinding the Fiat to a sudden devastating stop, which threw the Inquisitor’s Ford way ahead of the Fiat and Isabella into the windscreen of their car. She groaned and crumpled to the footwell, the revolver dropping from her hand. Henry found first gear and turned off the main route, the sedans further up the road stopping and trying to manoeuvre themselves around and give chase. The trick had bought Henry and Isabella a few extra seconds, but not enough. Gunshots flashed from the running boards of the following cars and the back of the Fiat bristled with revolver and rifle-fire.

  Henry steered left, plunging into a long promenade of shops, halfway along which stood a fountain gushing water onto shimmering black marble figurines clambering from a pool. He took his foot off the accelerator and peered over his shoulder, feeling the car slow to a lope.

  “What are you doing?” cried Isabella, her side groaning as she spoke.

  The Inquisitors’ cars roared up behind, the leading one pulling out of the slipstream to sit alongside. At the very moment it drew level, Henry floored the Fiat and steered hard into it, connecting with the front left wheel guard of the Ford. It plunged right and ploughed into the water fountain, mounting the pool’s stone wall, its undercarriage hooking itself firm to the figurines, the vehicle instantly grinding to a stop. The Inquisitors on the running board were thrown clear, arms and legs flapping helplessly, as they rose and then fell through the plate glass window of the shop opposite, vanishing into the black beyond, glass obliterated behind them.

  Henry allowed himself a brief smile before more gunshots peppered the carriage, winging him in the left arm. He cried out, his hand clasped to the wound, as Isabella reached across to him.

  “Keep down!” he shouted, turning from the promenade into another side-road before flooring the vehicle. The Ford rallied and Isabella did too, climbing from the footwell, the revolver back in her hand. She looked and fired off a round. The headlights of the chasing car dazzled her. She turned around to the road ahead, letting the lights in her eyes pass, preparing herself for the next shot.

  Suddenly, from in front of them, there was a flash of grey, an immense figure vaulting their car in a single leap and flying towards the Ford behind. Isabella gasped and turned to look, but Henry had already steered off the road.

  She heard the screeching of brakes followed by the sudden scream of metal and the shattering of glass. Whatever had leapt their vehicle had ploughed straight into the car behind. As darkness swept back into the car and the road rolled beneath their wheels, Isabella was sure she could hear the pleading cries of men, a solitary gunshot and the long harrowing cry of a wolf.

  TEN

  ROME. ITALY.

  The Fiat rattled on its hard tyres as Henry inched forward over the glistening cobbles. In the chaos of the chase Isabella had lost her bearings but suspected she was in one of the poorer districts of the city. Rats ran ahead of them, their scattering matted bodies and grey-pink tails illuminated by the car’s sickly light. Water could be heard dripping from broken guttering onto slimy green slabs below, a mouldy clinging smell in the alleyway.

  Without warning, Henry drew the car to a shuddering halt and pulled hard on the handbrake with a grating crank. The vehicle shook their bones for a moment before falling silent and still. Only then did he hang his head, his hands loosening on the steering wheel, exhaling slowly, his eyes lightly closed, his eyelids twitching like a man trying to chase a nightmare from his dreams. It was evident that his night’s exertions had taken a toll. Cold sweat had beaded on his forehead, his shirt was drenched with perspiration and his hair was matted in untidy darkened clumps.

  He returned his right hand to the bloody tear on his left biceps and clamped hard upon it, grimacing. Isabella looked across at him. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded, saying nothing.

  “What was that thing?” Isabella asked, fearing she already knew the answer. Henry remained silent, his eyes still shut, his right hand clamped to his crimson weeping wound. She took his silence as her answer and made to open her door, but without warning Henry reached across and took her wrist, drawing her back. His hand was slick with blood and it slipped on her skin. He grasped at her again, this time more firmly, only now fixing her with a warning gaze. “Wait.” He reached into the depths of his pocket, while all the time pulling her hand towards him. He turned her palm upwards and dropped a locket into it. “Wear this,” he said.

  Isabella regarded the necklace, a round pendant on a fine silver chain.

  “Francis of Assisi,” she muttered, lifting the necklace to allow the metal locket to drop and hang free. She inspected the item before her eyes, recognising at once the reverend bearded figure of the Saint.

  “The tamer of wolves,” Henry added darkly, and instantly Isabella’s fears were realised. Their eyes met and Henry held Isabella’s stare for a moment, before snatching the rifle from her lap and climbing out of the car. “Come on,” he said, his voice quiet but his tone grave. “Let’s get inside. It�
��s safer in there than out in the open. Especially at night.”

  Henry stood at the shuttered window of the end of the ground-floor terrace apartment and stared out onto the quiet street beyond, checking both ends of it and then back again. The rifle was still clutched in his hands, and only when he was finally sure they were alone did he let go of it, setting it down against the wall of the darkened room. It smelt dank and old, the walls mottled with age and decay, the once white plaster withered to grey and moss green.

  Isabella pulled the blanket tighter across her shoulders and wondered how it was she had found herself catapulted into this nightmare world of darkness and terror. She watched Henry light a candle, set it down on a small wooden table and pull out a chair, gesturing for her to sit. He then walked across to a cupboard on the far side of the room, out of which he produced a bottle and glasses.

  “Are we safe here?” she asked, taking a seat.

  “For now,” replied Henry. “Do you want a drink?” His tone was forced and assured, rather than hospitable.

  “I want answers,” Isabella replied. The candle’s flickering light caught on the circle of silver now hanging at her throat. “What are you doing in Rome?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” he replied, uncorking the bottle and pouring a stream of golden liquid into two of the three glasses. “Skulking in the depths of the city.” Isabella knew for whom the third glass was set and thought again about what it was she had seen flash past them as they had been pursued throughout the city. “What have you done to attract their attention, I wonder?”

  Isabella hesitated. “Their attention?” she replied. “Who are they? I know they are Inquisitors, but there was something different about them, something desperate.” She suddenly seemed to appreciate the accusation that had been thrown at her. “But what I did to attract their attention? I was doing nothing!” Henry shook his head and scowled, taking up his glass and necking half of the liquid in a single go, showing teeth and tight lips as the spirit burnt the back of his throat.

  “Don’t play games,” he retorted. “We’re too far down the road for that. We know. Almost everything. A lot more than you, I suspect. So put your little act of innocence aside and answer me this. What were you doing to attract so much attention at Sisto Bridge?”

  He raised the remains of his drink to his lips and Isabella studied him carefully, noticing how his hand shook. She knew then that his performance was exactly that. An act, and that he was as scared as she was. And his Italian was clumsy, forced. Isabella dropped into English, to make it easier for him.

  “I don’t know what I’ve done,” Isabella replied, reaching forward and lightly picking up her own glass. She remained leaning forward, her elbows on the edge of the table, the drink nursed in her hands. “I just happened to be there, at Ponte Sisto.”

  “What were you doing at the bridge?” asked Henry, his tone as jaundiced as the candlelight. “Did you see who shot the Priest?”

  She placed the brooch she had snatched from the Inquisitor on the table between them. “You mean who shot the Inquisitor?” Isabella corrected, and Henry smiled for the first time. Instantly she felt more relaxed and sat back, stretching out her long legs beneath the table and feeling the tightness in her muscles groan.

  “So what were you doing there?” he asked again, gathering strips of cloth from the side and laying them on the table. He took off his beige shirt, bloodied and torn near the shoulder, in order to bind his wound. A vest covered his compact chest. The muscles in his arms and beneath the vest were tight knots.

  Isabella remembered Giovanni and crumpled a little with emotion at the question. “Walking,” she said softly, as if it was an effort to think back, finding all her memories confused. “I was walking. With another Priest.”

  The words seemed like therapy as they came out, and she did nothing to stop them. She no longer cared for secrecy, not now, not with this man who already seemed to know so much, even though her admission would cost her more than her profession.

  “I work for the Chaste. We are a secret organisation within the Catholic Church. We test the faith of wayward Priests, or Priests we suspect of failing in their vows of chastity. I was trying to tempt an indiscretion from him, the Priest who was with me at the time. We’d stopped just beneath the shadow of the bridge. He was about to kiss me when a gun fired and a body dropped into the river from the bridge. Before I knew what I was doing, I was wading into the river to try to reach him. To try to save him. It was that which saved me. The next minute, the Inquisition, or whoever they are, they were shooting. Giovanni was hit and went down, as did the Priest. I grabbed hold of the body which had fallen and dived beneath the water, reaching the far side of the riverbank.”

  “He was dead?” asked Henry. “When you reached him?”

  “He was,” lied Isabella.

  “He said nothing?”

  She recalled Tacit’s name.

  “Were you hoping he would?” But Henry had fallen silent. “They chased me, chased me across the city, until you found me.”

  She looked up at him, her face now filled with the cold emotion of anger and defiance. Henry studied her carefully before he pursed his lips, nodding his head, as if what she had said made sense. He pulled out a chair and sat, beginning to tie the strips of cloth to his arm to bind his wound. If it pained him, he showed no sign.

  “You were lucky,” he muttered. “You don’t know what you’ve stumbled into.”

  “I know the Inquisition. I know what they’re capable of.” Isabella’s eyes turned to the Inquisitor’s brooch on the table, the emerald stone glinting in the weak amber candlelight. “I just want answers.”

  “So let’s see if we can find them,” called the rich alluring voice of a woman from behind her. Isabella knew who it was before she turned to look.

  “Sandrine Prideux,” she said.

  A tall dark-haired woman rested causally against the side of the open doorway, patting her face with a towel as if she had just returned from bathing, a loose shirt hanging from her shoulders, buttoned only to her breast line.

  “Sister Isabella,” replied Sandrine, her eyes flashing. “I am surprised to see you again.”

  “And I you. It would seem then that ‘Peace and Revenge’ never came to be?”

  Sandrine’s lips curled, her features hardening. She dropped the towel into the crook of her elbow and crossed her arms. “Perhaps not Peace,” she replied, her eyes glowering.

  Isabella smiled thinly, weighing the comment in her mind. She recalled the ruin of Fampoux, the resolute defiance of Sandrine as she and Henry prepared to leave that town for the final time.

  “I should kill you,” Sandrine continued, stepping lightly into the room, drawn towards Henry. She stroked a hand up his back and spread her fingers through his hair, pulling herself towards his face for a brief kiss. Her hand closed about Henry’s bound arm in a sign of concern, but he shook his head in assurance. Isabella used the opportunity to check her proximity to an exit, before her eyes met Sandrine’s again. “You know that, don’t you? I should kill you for what you did in Paris.”

  “And why should you do that?” Isabella asked, as Sandrine took up the liquor and poured herself a large measure. She set the bottle down hard, so that the impact of it shook the table, and snatched up the glass, holding it up to the edge of her chin, observing the Sister as if formulating the words to reply to her retort.

  “You, and the Priest. The Inquisitor. The one they call Tacit.” She hissed the name with contempt. “You ruined everything. At the Mass for Peace. You killed the Cardinal Bishop Monteria.”

  Isabella had long laid awake at night after the events in the French capital and the Mass for Peace, imagining what might have happened had Cardinal Bishop Monteria not been stopped from donning the wolf pelt and transforming before the massed congregation at Notre Dame. Passion fuelled her words as she replied. “That Cardinal Bishop was about to commit mass murder within Notre Dame!”

  “Tha
t Cardinal Bishop was helping us to strike back at our enemies! All our combined enemies! We had planned everything for months. Me. Cardinal Bishop Monteria. Cardinal Poré. My father.” A shadow seemed to draw across her face like a veil, sorrow replacing her anger. “We were willing to risk everything, even our lives, for a chance to avenge what had been done to my people for centuries, to repay the curses cast upon us, to give those who had spun those corrupt incantations a moment to stop and reflect on the wickedness of their actions. To throw open the windows to this wickedness for all to see.”

  “By killing so many innocent people as well! Is that what you wanted? To kill all those innocent people who were attending the Mass in order to show the errors of our Catholic faith’s past? The diplomats? The royal families? The innocent civilians? All slaughtered for revenge?”

  Sandrine’s teeth were bared. “And this war doesn’t slaughter enough innocents as it is?” She took a step towards Isabella, her fists clenched and raised, but she caught sight of the pendant at the Sister’s throat and paused, drawing back a step and seeming to shrink and calm. “Peace! That is what we sought primarily. A chance to end this infernal war. A chance to make mankind realise that there were more terrible things within the world for them to face together rather than their own kind, their neighbours, their foreign cousins, those separated by race or religion. Peace and revenge! Peace for the world, and revenge for our people. And you took both away.”

  At once Isabella’s defiance shrunk. “It never would have worked,” she said, but her words came falteringly. She knew that she and Tacit had saved a thousand lives at Notre Dame, but by doing so, had they perhaps ensured the continuation of the war? Not a day had gone by when the thought had not troubled her. She watched Sandrine take a deep pull on her drink, before she said, “I never realised.”

  “Realised what?”

  “That you were one of them.”

  A cold smile drew itself across Sandrine’s face, one of resignation and pain. “We are all one. We are family drawn together by blood.”