“You did only what was expected of you.” Henry took a step forward and grasped the old Father gently by the arm. “We need him back. And only you can help.”
But Strettavario shook his head. “I don’t think you or Sister Isabella understand. It’s inquisitional rules that when you go into Toulouse Inquisitional Prison, you only ever leave in a coffin.”
“Then it’s time to break the rules,” said Henry his fingers straining against the grip of his weapon. “Father Strettavario, we need him. And you’re going to help us get him out.”
TWENTY ONE
THE ITALIAN FRONT. THE SOČA RIVER. NORTHWEST SLOVENIA.
Pablo stopped and looked back down the way he had climbed. Below him the mountainside seemed to writhe with the sight of ten thousand grey-green infantrymen following in his wake, as if the Carso was a rotting hunk of meat on which maggots were feasting. It was a scene which both inspired and terrified him, the immensity and the power.
“We cannot lose this war!” he exclaimed, on seeing the vast numbers of soldiers of the Third Army, raising his rifle as a mountaineer might his pick on conquering a summit. A smile broke across his face for the first time in days.
“Take your fucking hands down, you fool!” shouted Corporal Abelli, reaching out and slapping the young Private’s arms back to his sides. “You want to draw every fucking Hungarian sniper in your direction?”
“No. But look, sir!” Pablo said, giving the rocky crags a cursory glance for the enemy, before looking back down the mountainside, Private Lazzari beside him turning to look as well.
“What about it?” snapped the Corporal.
“We are so many!”
“And the Austro-Hungarians aren’t?” called the Sergeant Major, stepping up and snorting, a sound Pablo had quickly come to despise since his time in the Carso. “Don’t worry, we have more than our equal ahead of us.”
The Sergeant pushed past him roughly, warning the three of them not to dawdle on the mountainside path. Fellow soldiers, who had stopped to listen to what the Corporal and their Sergeant had to say, turned and trudged after him with heavy feet. The young soldier watched them go, his enthusiasm and momentary joy trickling away.
“What have you got to be so unhappy about?” asked Corporal Abelli, sucking his teeth. Pablo shrugged and he patted him on the shoulder. “Come on Pablo! We go to do a great thing!” he said, and Pablo wasn’t sure if he said it partly in jest. “Surely the Priests told you so? They wouldn’t have brought you here if they didn’t think it to be a good thing. An act ordained by the Lord!”
Abelli chuckled, his good humour returned, but Pablo shrugged once again. “They never gave me any choice. Always I’ve done as I’ve been commanded by the Priests.”
“And I should think so!” replied Abelli. “After all, they’ve fed and watered you all your life!”
“How do you know that?” asked Pablo.
“Priests talk,” Abelli deftly replied. “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t know where my men came from. I know that they took you in when you were just a young child, cast out by your family and friends for the shame of your deformities.” The Corporal indicated Pablo’s hands, and the young man blushed and drew them into tight balls. Now it was Abelli’s turn to shrug. “As long as you can fight and know how to stay alive, that’s all that matters to me. I don’t care what you look like.” He indicated Lazzari and said, “Look at that poor bastard next to you!”
Pablo laughed. “Do we have to go the entire way to the top?” he asked, peering up into the Carso.
“To the very top,” the Corporal nodded, soldiers trudging up beside them. He lifted a finger to the summit far beyond. Pablo traced the line it made, up through the clouds to the heavens where he supposed the summit of the Carso lay, hidden in thick cotton white.
“And what lies at the top?” asked Pablo. “Why’s it so important?”
But the Corporal shook his head. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me!”
Pablo tucked his rifle over his shoulder and gripped it tightly with his six-fingered hands.
TWENTY TWO
ROME. ITALY.
Father Strettavario smelt liniment and sour brandy from the moment he stepped into the damp terraced house. And something else. The earthy musk of wet fur. He recognised the stink at once, and his immediate reaction had been to brace himself for an attack, to harden his limbs for the assault and to tune his mind away from the pain which he supposed would come when he found himself in a fight, even more so when he heard the door close behind him and lock.
But it was an attack which never came. Instead, a voice he recognised called his name; he relaxed and watched Isabella step out of the shadows towards him. “I apologise for the manner by which you’ve been brought here, Father Strettavario. We’ve had need for secrecy and haste.”
“Then you should have not brought the automobile,” replied the squat Priest, pulling his robes back around his shoulders in an attempt to present some semblance of respectability. He caught Isabella’s curious look. “Whoever it was who pursued you the other night, the Inquisition will be aware, and they will be watchful.” While his voice was quiet and restrained, it carried a presence of authority and control. “The Inquisition do not take kindly to people riding recklessly through Rome’s city streets at night, killing Inquisitors. They will have spotted the Fiat. They will be on their way. You know that, don’t you?”
Isabella looked across at Henry and he nodded. “This was only ever a temporary place to stay. We have somewhere else to go.” His voice was assured, but she noticed that he immediately crossed to the shuttered windows to survey the street beyond.
“I trust the next place you have in mind is better than these poor lodgings,” replied the old Priest, only now catching sight of Sandrine resting against the far wall.
His eyes narrowed on her as she stepped across the floorboards towards him. “Sandrine Prideux,” he said, his lips gripped white.
“You know me?” Sandrine asked, tensing.
“Yes. Arras. Your little game. We never met, but your description precedes you. You caused us a lot of trouble.”
“Sadly not enough,” retorted Sandrine.
“Which thankfully failed. And now you are reduced to living like this?” Strettavario tutted, looking about the room disdainfully.
“Unfortunately we are not afforded the luxuries of those in the Vatican,” she sneered. Then she caught sight of the Priest’s eyes and hesitated, glancing over at Isabella. “I don’t like the look of him. Are you sure we can we trust him?”
“Probably not,” Isabella replied, “but he’s all we have if we want Tacit back.”
“This Tacit,” said Sandrine, lifting her chin so she looked down even more on the stout Priest, “I’ve been told it’s important we free him. Why? I don’t understand, he’s only a man …”
Strettavario chuckled and felt something stir within him. “Only a man? I wouldn’t call him that.”
“Then what would you call him?”
“A force of nature.” The Priest said the words quickly, as if he knew them without question to be true. “So, you want to break Tacit out of prison? Why would you want to do that? And why should I help you?”
“Because we’ll kill you otherwise,” warned Sandrine.
Strettavario chuckled. “That does not concern me. I have been threatened many times before, been told my life is at an end by many enemies. I have made my peace with God. Tell me, have you made your peace with him?”
Isabella stepped between them. “We want you to help us break him out because of what is coming.”
“And what is that?”
Car lights from the street outside reached through the shutters and swept the length of the room.
“They’re here!” cried Henry, clawing at his rifle.
“We can go out the back,” said Sandrine. She stepped towards the darkness, Henry following without a word.
But Strettavario remained beside the cha
ir, unmoving. “Tell me, Sister Isabella, what do you think is coming?”
“The Antichrist,” she replied. “He is preparing the world for his return.”
She expected Strettavario to mock the announcement, but instead he nodded, his eyes growing serious and dark. “I believe you.”
“You do?” said Isabella, with a start. “How so?”
“The Eagle Fountain in the Vatican Gardens.”
“What about it?
“It has begun to flow with blood.”
“My Lord!”
“I have seen these signs rarely, but when I have previously, they’ve only meant one thing.”
“What do the Holy See believe?” asked Isabella, the emotion drained from her words.
The pale-eyed Father chuckled weakly and shook his head. “The Holy See are paralysed with indecision and fear. They know what these signs mean, but choose to hope that they are wrong. When you see your enemy coming, sometimes it’s easier to look the other way. So how do you propose we get Tacit out?” he asked, looking at the Sister. “No one has ever broken out of Toulouse Prison. No man can.”
“That is why we found you,” replied Isabella. “We hoped you would be able to help.”
“We don’t have time to discuss this here and now. We must leave!” Henry interrupted.
Strettavario paused, his hand to his chin, his eyes boring into Isabella, “He likes you.” His gaze was fierce. Determined. “Tacit, he likes you.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Isabella replied, too quickly.
“We don’t have time for this!” ordered Henry from the open door. There were footsteps in the street outside the building.
“I think you’re the only person he’s ever felt anything for, since Mila was taken from him.” Isabella looked away, but it was more to hide the emotion welling in her eyes. “I think you’re the only person who can bring him back, give him back his spirit and a reason to live and fight.”
More footsteps sounded in the alley outside, harsh voices intermingled among them.
“I don’t understand,” Isabella said, her hands held out towards the old Priest. “I don’t understand. What I can do?”
A heavy blow on the bolted door behind them rattled its hinges and drew plumes of dust from the lintel. Strettavario stepped towards Isabella, his hands clawed and raised, as if about to throttle her. “Sister Isabella, it’s very simple,” he muttered, his face a murderous scowl, “I need you to die.”
TWENTY THREE
TOULOUSE INQUISITIONAL PRISON. TOULOUSE. FRANCE.
Tacit’s skin was slick with blood and sweat, his mind shattered by the torment of his suffering, delirious with pain and exhaustion. The cell sank and spun from his vision and momentarily he felt he was falling down into darkness, embraced by the raw talons of death. He thought then it was his time to die, alone in that cell, butchered and broken, no longer human but a piece of meat, hacked and desecrated for another’s pleasure.
Why they were doing this to him, he did not know, only that someone hated him enough to unleash their most depraved of visions upon his body and then retreat when there was just enough left of him to survive, only to return the following day to continue the torture.
His body was spent. He knew that he had nothing more to give, no more strength to resist. Not now. Not after so much had been done to him. Not after last time. The thought of Isabella came into his mind and he smiled through the delirium of death’s closing embrace. A fleeting image. A final moment of peace.
The door to the cell creaked open and Tacit looked up. He knew there was something different about this visit from Salamanca from the moment the head torturer first entered his cell, the way he looked at him with his head turned to one side, the way his eyes flashed, as if he had divined some inner secret about Tacit and was waiting for the most opportune moment to reveal it.
As if Salamanca possessed something which he knew would hurt the prisoner far more than any nail, blade or flaming brand could ever do.
Tacit watched him closely, his eyes heavy and his teeth bared, waiting as the usual mass of subordinates followed in Salamanca’s wake into his cell. Somewhere inside him an ancient baleful voice shrieked. “What is it?” he hissed, tensing himself against the nails and the bonds which still held him, the chains cutting hard into his already torn skin, the iron spikes grinding against his bones. “What’s so amusing, Salamanca?”
Salamanca smiled and leant back against the prison wall, his arms drawn about him. He crossed his ankles and chuckled, studying Tacit with calculating eyes. The pack of jailers and miscreants of the prison guard laughed with him, they too recognising the unfamiliar manner of their master this visit, intrigued by it. “You’re a brave man, Tacit,” Salamanca nodded, puckering his dry lips while he examined one of his dirt-encrusted nails in the sickly light, “I’ll give you that. Strong. Unfeeling. Unyielding. Seemingly impervious to physical pain.”
“What’s that I detect, Salamanca?” replied Tacit, allowing himself the hint of a smile. “Envy?”
“How could I possibly be envious of you? Chained and unloved! Or maybe there is, was, someone?” Salamanca allowed the words to hang in the air before he followed them with a hoarse, withering chuckle. “Do you think there’s someone out there waiting for you, outside these prison walls, someone who holds a torch for a monster like you?”
Tacit’s eyes narrowed.
“I mean, we’ve all heard the rumours that Poldek Tacit, the heartless Inquisitor, had in fact a heart after all.”
Tacit tested the bonds. “Let me out of here and I’ll show you how much heart I have!”
Salamanca ignored him. “But those rumours, it seems they’ve grown, taken on a life of their own. Blossomed from rumour into what some believe is fact.”
“And what is that?”
“Perish the thought that you’d let someone close enough to thaw your frozen heart!” And then Salamanca stood back and smirked. “Or did you?” he asked, at length.
Tacit stared hard. “What do you mean?” he growled, but there was the root of doubt growing within him, and with it the hellish voices of hate were growing too.
“Sister Isabella?”
At once Tacit held himself rigid. “What about her?” he seethed, his jaw set wide, his eyes fierce.
“She’s dead, Tacit,” Salamanca smiled, and his eyes flashed with triumph at seeing Tacit’s face fall. “She’s dead,” he repeated laughing, seeing how his words were finally defeating the prisoner. “Dead! Dead!”
The blood drained from Tacit’s face and his mouth crumpled open. Instantly, tears welled in his wide eyes, his pupils now pinpricks of black, every feature in his face frozen, as if time itself had stopped. Shrieks of derision and coarse laughter from the crowd of jailers shook the cell, and all along the cell block inmates wondered what terrible injustice had been done to the most feared and reviled of prisoners.
Inside Tacit’s head, old memories danced and then burned in the terrible rage growing in his mind. Fragments of the past, of laughter, love, warmth, passion, of Isabella, of her touch, gathered like fiery brands of hope, almost too dazzling to behold, and then fell spinning into the torment of black which was overtaking every sense, every perception Tacit possessed. A darkness was creeping in from the edges of his consciousness, of his very being. A devilish cold clutched him, as if an angel of death had placed her icy talon into his heart. But Tacit knew who it was who had wounded his heart and his eyes were on him. The man in front of him, Salamanca, laughing and slapping at his knee, as the revelation bent the torturer double with hilarity.
Out of the darkness there came a cry, like that of a demon dragging itself from the very bowels of hell itself. And with it a strength even Tacit never knew he possessed, grew. At once Salamanca stopped laughing and with him the other jailers began to rush for the door. For the cry had become a roar and the roar was now a thunderclap. And with it the chains that held Tacit’s left arm tight ripped clear, whipping in the air like bonds broken f
rom a caged animal. The jailers were shrieking and falling back, scrambling for the door and fighting each other in their urge to get away.
Tacit tore his right arm from the bonds and then his legs. Down the length of the cell block bells of alarm began to sound, but Tacit never heard them. He wrenched his ankle from the chain which had held him firm to the wall for so long and powered after Salamanca, catching hold of him within four broad strides. The first blow broke the torturer’s spine below his ribs. The second spun him flat out on the floor, his broken back against the piss-covered corridor down which he would walk no more. Tacit sprang on him, setting his entire weight on his chest.
“A name,” he growled, his teeth gritted so firm in his jaw that they sounded as if they were cracking, his whole body shaking with fury. Lights seemed to gather and fork from the ends of his fingers. The voice within had become a wail. “You’re going to give me the name of the person who killed Isabella. And then death will seem like a gift after what I’m going to do to you.”
TWENTY FOUR
TOULOUSE INQUISITIONAL PRISON. TOULOUSE. FRANCE.
The prison hammered with noise and people, guards and gunfire. Tacit didn’t know which way was out but he suspected up was as good as any, knowing he’d been buried deep within the prison, as deep as it went.
“Isabella!”
If Tacit screamed her name as he ran, he never knew that he was doing so, only that her name roared aloud in his skull. Over and over.
There were three guards at the end of his corridor, cowering as they watched him approach from behind their locked door. He knew them all. They’d witnessed him being tortured often enough. He took the door at a run and bundled into it, knocking it from its hinges. The men went down beneath it with a grunt and didn’t move.
Tacit felt nothing but red rage coursing within him, a devouring anger to which he gave himself entirely, the voice, the screaming beseeching voice, urging him on. On.
There were stairs just ahead. He took them at a bound, four steps a stride, roaring up them as rifle-fire sprayed down onto him from above. Something bit hard into his shoulder, failing to break his pace. He bounded across the room and caught the man at the gun post firm in the throat, his fingers tightening so that they touched together through the flesh and skin of his neck. The warden went down gasping for air as Tacit gathered his rifle from the ground and checked the magazine. There were four rounds left. He put three through the heads of the next three guards he found in the corridor beyond and the fourth through the lock of the heavy metal door ahead, allowing him to plough through it and its shattered lock as if they weren’t there.
The Fallen Page 10