The Priest’s lower lip had withered through years too long to remember to resemble a thin line of gristle, and his yellow teeth protruded prominently. In the dark of the vault, lit only by copper-coloured lanterns, he ran his finger across the spines of the books and bound sheets of papers lining the shelves to his right, counting quietly as he went.
There was a smell of ink and linseed in the corridor, a rich golden light emanating across it, as if the vast room beyond was a giant hall filled with treasure. And it was filled with a treasure, the sum of all man’s knowledge stored in a single vast room.
The Great Library.
“Three sins?” the librarian Priest repeated, turning from the main thoroughfare of the hall into a narrow side avenue, lined with the broad ends of shelves. “And what brings Monsignor Benigni to look upon such a topic? I thought it was the policy of the Sodalitium Pianum to reserve their investigations to those of modern indiscretions, rather than those identified since the coming of Man?”
Benigni raised an eyebrow, his piggy black eyes flashing. “And I thought it was the policy of the Great Library and its servants to refrain from enquiring as to visitors’ topics of interest?” he asked, his tone perfectly balanced between wit and warning. “And anyway, surely all indiscretions sprout from the three sins?”
The Priest bowed his head in submission. “Very well,” he replied, before vanishing around the corner. Benigni took the opportunity to peer about himself and the hall in which he stood. The chamber was immense, a hundred feet tall, three hundred feet long, filled with innumerable broad wooden shelves reaching to the ceiling, serviced by tall ladders manoeuvred on giant wheels, running on metal tracks. The hall echoed with the quiet bustle of a thousand Priests, poring over the shelves, returning books piled on heavy carts or studiously turning over pages. He savoured the calm atmosphere, the smell of aged leather and paper, waiting patiently for the Priest’s return. When he emerged he was carrying a great pile of books, up to his nose, over which he peered.
“This should help you with what you’re looking for,” muttered the Priest, handing the stack of tomes over to the Monsignor’s outstretched hands. “There’s a desk just over there,” he said, pointing with a hand. Benigni nodded and turned towards it. “Just be warned,” said the Priest, his eyes narrowing. “Some subjects have teeth. And what’s more, some bite.”
TWENTY SEVEN
THE VATICAN. VATICAN CITY.
Father Angelo Coronati bore his sermon notes like a gift he was bringing to a gathering, for that is exactly how he saw them, gifts for those who had come to hear him speak. He’d been told he had a keen skill with words, an ability to express clarity and resonance, to send his words rising and ringing among the congregation, to bring all who heard them solace and insight.
He slipped into the cool of the early morning Vatican air from a rear door of St Peter’s Basilica, clutching his bundle of papers tight. He could hear the sound of distant choral music emanating from one of the churches in the city. For a moment he closed his eyes and bathed in its beauty, before making the ten steps across the grass of the Vatican lawn to the cobbled street in front of him, the winding road snaking its way through the gardens and between the chapels of the city. But Coronati did not need to follow it. The church of St Stephen of the Abyssinians, set back in the shadows of a towering fir, stood just across the road from where he approached. He cleared his throat and set his head low in a determined pose, his hard-soled shoes tapping against the stone cobbles.
He had led Mass in this particular church for nearly five years. He was proud to have done so, to lead a service to God in the oldest church in Vatican City. One could almost feel the years of faith and joy living within the building, like a heavenly embrace clothing all with its love and fervour.
In the shadow of the church’s doorway, the white stone of its arch etched deep with the pattern of the Lamb and the Cross, Coronati raised a hand to the door and pushed, holding his sermon to his chest with a firm arm. Instantly he shivered against the brutal cold which greeted him from inside the thick-walled chapel, far colder than the cool of the dawn.
He drew the front doors wide, bustling beneath his robes in an attempt to tease some warmth into his chilled limbs. There was a candle-stand to the left of the entrance and he set down his sermon notes upon it, lighting a candle with shaking fingers, light radiating slowly into the room. Coronati couldn’t help but feel that the air within the chapel seemed not only cold but oppressive too, as if the pitch of night had somehow remained inside the building. The joy so often keenly felt when stepping inside the building was no longer there.
The Priest picked up his sermon and walked deeper into the chapel, stopping to light more candles as he went. Slowly the church began to burgeon into life, the amber luminescence seeming to bring just a little more warmth to the building. But still Father Coronati shivered, the sermon tight to his chest. He reached the ambulatory and noticed how his breath ballooned in clouds before him, that his fingers ached with cold. It was a chill more reminiscent of a deeply buried prison cell than a place of worship.
He looked back to the church’s open door eighty feet away, pale tendrils of dawn searching inside. Something troubled him, not just the sudden ice in the air. It was an unsettling sense of doubt. He wondered if he was ailing with a malady, the early signs of a fever perhaps? He placed his sermon on the lectern and put a hand to his forehead to feel for a temperature. An almost overwhelming sense of sorrow, agonising in its melancholy, suddenly took hold of him. He shuddered, clutching the edge of the stand for support, and felt the urge to weep, to cast aside all hope. A cry caught in his throat and he fought to keep hold of it in case it escaped as a moan. Such desolation and despair! He’d never felt anything like it before.
In final hope, he raised his heavy eyes to the fresco of Madonna and Child. After all, it always cheered his spirits to see it. But as he looked up he cried out, recoiling in horror. His hand reached out to the lectern to steady himself, but the shock of what he had seen was too terrible and he dragged it with him as he fell, casting the carefully ordered sheets of his sermon to the ground around him.
There was blood on the fresco, blood pouring from the eyes of the Madonna and her child, pouring from cruel wounds gouged deep into the paintings and the very stone of the church walls on which they had been painted.
TWENTY EIGHT
ROME. ITALY.
The passageway was too narrow and low for Georgi to pass through without having to hunch, his head and shoulders stooped as if in subservience.
At times his arms brushed the wood-panelled walls of the tilting corridor, the nun leading him through the winding labyrinth of the Trastevere Monastery minuscule before him, ancient beyond years. It seemed, if anything, that the corridor might swallow her.
“It’s most unusual to accept a Priest here, particularly at such an hour,” she said, her voice thin and subdued.
“Apologies, Sister,” growled Georgi, checking the doors they passed to gauge whether the particular Sister he had come to visit had close neighbours. “I would not usually trouble you, but the Holy See insisted I speak to Sister Malpighi with utmost urgency.”
“Bad news from the Vatican?” asked the diminutive Sister, stopping before Malpighi’s dark varnished door.
“Far worse than that, I fear,” replied Georgi, earnestly.
She knew the Priest had come to the right place. Only Sister Malpighi had the true vision to advise and direct on pressing matters, which could not be resolved by debate alone. The Sister nodded, accepting the Priest’s reply and knowing it prudent not to enquire further. Sister Malpighi would resolve the situation. She always did, whenever trouble arose and the Holy See sent one of their Priests to speak to her, even one like this man, someone Sister Maltese had never seen before. Malpighi’s visions were rarely wrong. Sister Maltese tapped twice on the door and instantly a tiny voice called back.
“Sister Maltese. You and my visitor may come in.”
/> Sister Maltese opened the door and stepped quietly inside, Georgi following her in, bowing beneath the door frame as he did so.
“My apologies, Sister Malpighi,” said Georgi, his hand to his chest. “I have been sent from the Holy See to have words with you regarding something of terrific importance.”
“Really?” replied the reverend Sister at the window tersely, her face growing more doubting with every passing moment. “Whatever is required, it does not demand Sister Maltese to be present. Sister Maltese, please leave.”
She spoke with such force that Maltese’s hand gripped at the collar of her shirt, aghast at Sister Malpighi’s manner. She’d never heard the Sister talk in such a way before, always thinking of Sister Malpighi as a polite and measured person in all she said and did. Sister Maltese bowed her head in quiet acceptance and backed away. Georgi watched her and closed the door behind her when she had gone, holding it shut with his hand.
“There was no need for her to die as well,” said Malpighi. “I know what you were thinking. You need only me.”
“So it seems they were right,” said Georgi, a ruthless smile crossing his face. “That you have the ‘sight’.”
“This does not end well for you, Georgi Akeldama, you who ‘died’ once to hide from your old masters in order to join with your new ones,” said Malpighi, her voice firm and unrelenting. “You will die again, but this time permanently in the arms of the one you love.”
“I think you’re getting me confused with someone else, Sister,” said Georgi. He locked the door with the key in the lock and stepped towards her. “So, tell me, then,” he said, drawing out his knife from the folds of the robe. “What do I want from you?”
“My eyes,” replied the Sister. “You’ve come to take my eyes.”
TWENTY NINE
ROME. ITALY.
Something ageless and profane was on the wind tonight, something funereal and withering to anything it touched.
Soldiers on the western front drew their coats tight about them and supposed that autumn would soon be here. Soldiers on the eastern front called for extra rations of vodka and took out letters from home. Sailors on their ships, far out to sea, felt a wave of homesickness wash over them. Mothers, pressing photos of their sons to their breasts, stopped and gasped, feeling that something terrible had happened to their loved ones serving overseas, while infants in rooms above sobbed pitifully in their sleep.
Something wicked and eternal had been awoken, and exhaled a foul breath.
All across the world, Priests crossed themselves at the malice they sensed, Cardinals sat up and muttered silent prayers, Inquisitors paused in their deadly pursuits and stared out into the black heavens above for a moment, wondering what wickedness it was they had felt.
Candles flickered, cattle lowed, cats hissed, dogs sprang from baskets and barked at shadows.
Crows flocked towards the Vatican in huge numbers.
Something undying shifted restlessly in its dark abyss.
THIRTY
THE VATICAN. VATICAN CITY.
The city’s sewer stank, as did Tacit’s mood.
He drained the remaining inch of brandy from his bottle and began climbing the rusted iron rungs of the ladder. It hadn’t taken him long to arrive at the capital after his escape, riding the train he had stowed aboard from Toulouse almost all the way to the Vatican. Throughout the journey he had played Salamanca’s admission around and around in his mind, the revelation that Strettavario had murdered Isabella still inconceivable to him. Unfathomable.
And yet, for all that, Tacit knew exactly what the old Father was capable of, how dispassionate he could be, how he could act without question or mercy to ensure the orders of his Church were carried out.
How murder was not beyond him. When required, Strettavario could be as unyielding and cold as his pale staring eyes. There had always been something about the man Tacit had respected, admired even. Perhaps it was because he saw so much of himself in him?
But that was then. Now the old man was going to die. The journey to the Vatican had given time for Tacit’s wrath to ripen and fester like a poison. Now, back in the capital, he felt ready to let the venom loose.
The ladder led up to a courtyard within Vatican City. Tacit emerged from the dark sewer hole and slunk back instantly as an Inquisitor took him by surprise, walking past at the very same moment. The pair stared blankly at each other, both startled. Tacit moved first, wordlessly breaking the man’s neck in an instant and dropping him through the sewer hole.
Inquisitors patrolling the Vatican? At once Tacit knew something was not right.
He took the stairs at the far end of the colonnade at speed, heading towards Strettavario’s apartment, and reached the third floor, breathing hard. A Priest met him coming the other way and Tacit knocked him on his back with a punch and dragged him unconscious into a side-room, shutting the door firmly behind him. There was no point in silencing the Priest permanently. The Church would know soon enough that Tacit had returned, once they found Strettavario’s body. All he needed was a little silence for a while, enough time to exact his revenge on the traitor.
The apartment Tacit was seeking was at the far end of the corridor. As he ran he recalled the years Strettavario and he had spent together, past assignments on which the old Priest had trailed Tacit. It had seemed to the Inquisitor that the Priest was always just a few paces behind him, watching him, as if he didn’t entirely trust him, as if always waiting for him to step over a line never supposed to be crossed. But now the old Father had stepped over a line himself and it would be he who regretted doing so.
The door to his apartment was locked and Tacit kicked it off its hinges and bounded inside. The room beyond was empty, as was the rest of the residence. Tacit spotted Strettavario’s diary on his desk and leafed his way through it. Empty. There were no visits scheduled to take him out of the city, no assignments which needed his attention. Tacit knew he must still be in Rome.
There was dirt on the carpet, the tread marks close to the window. Not Priests’ shoes. A soldier’s boot. At once Tacit knew that Strettavario must have received a visitor, but this visit had not ended in a struggle. Strettavario had gone peacefully, willingly even, with the visitor and with enough presence of mind to lock the door behind him. Tacit lifted his eyes to the greying outline of Rome beyond. Somewhere within the city Strettavario and his accomplice were hiding.
Tacit strode from the room knowing he would find them. The question wasn’t if. The question was merely when.
THIRTY ONE
THE ITALIAN FRONT. THE SOČA RIVER. NORTHWEST SLOVENIA.
The Italian Third Army was marching again. After two days being held down in the lower reaches of the Carso, burning under the scorching endless sun and growing despondent about home and loved ones, the order had been drawn up for the army to move.
An endless grey shabby line of stumbling sweaty soldiers snaked out from the lush green of the tree line below, climbing barren paths winding slowly and at times steeply up around the mountain side, always up, towards the grey and blinding white of the Carso’s ridged peaks in the distance.
The Karst Plateau lay at its very summit, a broad flat terrain like a lunar landscape, but pricked with a single pinnacle of black rock on its western edge. An ungodly place, spurned by man and beast.
The perpetual summer sun bore down on the marching soldiers like a curse. Backs of necks burnt red, dry mouths hung open and tongues, caked thick with a skin of saliva, lolled from between split parched lips.
Up they marched falteringly, through gorges strewn with rubble and the detritus of a population which had fled before the Italian enemy had arrived, doing all they could to slow the invaders. Carts had been drawn across paths and their wheels broken to wedge them firm in the dust and rocks. Rolls of old wire fencing, once used to house poultry and keep out vermin, were strung across roads. Often the soldiers came across a ramshackle sea of garden implements, hoes, rakes, spades, all of which had been se
t in the cold unyielding earth as a flimsy wall, or thrown across the route with broken barrels and anything else that could help slow progress.
All too rarely for the soldiers’ liking, they would cross stone bridges over rivers of turquoise, and fall out to fill bottles with fast flowing water that was ice cold from the mountain peaks and tasted like nectar in the clinging heat.
“Make sure you all drink,” said the Sergeant Major to the soldiers lined up along the river bank, some of them up to their knees in the cold water. He watched Pablo fill his bottle. Satisfied, he went on, walking with his swagger stick tight to his right leg. Pablo watched him go, then found himself looking absently across the vista.
“The Priests,” he said, taking a drink from his bottle, “they’re just standing there staring at me. It’s off-putting.”
“You seeing things?” replied Private Lazzari, splashing himself with water from a scooped hand, before gathering up his gear from the bank.
Pablo knew he wasn’t. They’d been watching him, like overcautious parents, ever since he had first come into the mountain with them. He snatched up his equipment and ran quickly into line.
“Always the first, eh?” muttered the Corporal, watching Pablo standing near the head of the column of men on the gravel road cutting a rough course across the mountainside. The Corporal set his hat squarely over his head and pushed it into place. “Careful. Don’t you know that first in line means first over the top, the first to be shot. Cannon fodder.” He chuckled to himself cynically and took a fat-bellied pipe from the depths of his jacket, which he shoved into the side of his mouth.
“We’ve not seen any of the enemy yet,” replied Pablo, as the Sergeant called them forward. “Maybe they’ve all gone? Retreated? After all, if this place is as you suggest, it has no value.”
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