“I have never witnessed such a thing before,” he thrust with his thumb over his shoulder.
“It’s a vision,” replied Tacit.
“A vision? Of what?” asked Isabella.
“Hell,” Tacit replied. “The manner of the wounds, the way the Sister was crucified upside down. It was a satanic ritual, although for what end, I don’t know.” He rubbed his hand against the sides of his temple, as if grinding some memory from his mind.
“Perhaps this killing is a single event?” Henry suggested, ducking through the doorway where bodies of Inquisitors were piled.
“No, this is just the beginning,” replied Tacit, a knowing look in his eye.
“How do you know that?”
“This ritual. It is the first. Others will follow. The coins, left behind. They’re a sign, a payment to greater forces to unleash something into the world.”
“The coins? They were Austro-Hungarian Krone?”
“That’s where the culmination of the ritual will take place. Something is telling me this was the first act. The lust of the eyes.”
“The lust of the eyes?” asked Henry, his own growing large. “What is that?”
“One of the three sins.” Tacit knew where the ritual was leading. There would be bloodshed, there would be carnage, the loss of many, many lives. And his mind turned to the war, to Italy’s recent entry, the rumours of battles on the border, of new battles which were coming, of Italian and Austro-Hungarian forces meeting on the border between Italy and Slovenia.
“I don’t understand,” said Isabella, accepting Tacit’s hand and being lead through an open door into the cool of the Italian night. After the fog and stench of the Sister’s apartment, the fresh air was like a tonic, washing them clean. “What do you mean ‘it is the first’.”
“The first of three rituals.”
“And what are they?” asked Henry.
“The beginning.”
“Of what?”
“The end.”
SIXTY SEVEN
THE VATICAN. VATICAN CITY.
There was uproar in the Holy See that evening. Shouts reverberated around the inquisitional hall, cries of panic and alarm from all who had flooded into the chamber to listen and make their fears known about what was occurring in Rome. Cardinal Berberino was at the head of the outburst, laying out the facts like charges.
“I do wish you would calm down, Cardinal Berberino!” said Cardinal Secretary of State Casado, shaking his head, trying to give the appearance of stability and control.
“Calm down?” the thick-set Cardinal retorted, the wide neck of his collar stained yellow with sweat. “There are wolves running wild in the streets of Rome, Casado!”
“And we have Inquisitors dealing with them,” Casado tried to reason with him.
“Are you hearing me correctly, Secretary of State? There are wolves, in Rome! There has never been such a thing before! Are we to think we have lost control of the city?”
“Far from it,” Casado assured him.
“And what of Sister Malpighi!” shouted Cardinal Bishop Korek. “Murdered!”
“Cut apart, I heard!” someone else exclaimed, burying his head in his handkerchief.
“Whatever will become of us and our faith?” lamented another Priest.
“Gunfights within Rome’s streets! Wolves running amok! I thought it bad enough when it was Inquisitors, but wolves?”
“The Devil has already planted one cloven foot within our land!” warned Cardinal Bishop Korek, waving with his finger.
“And chaos runs free in the streets!” added Berberino, sinking his head into his right palm and swiping the sweat from his tightly wound hair. “End times!” He raised a pointed finger to the ceiling, the noise rising to a crescendo so that no one could be heard against the clash of voices. “We were wrong. End times are not coming! They have arrived!”
Suddenly, a single gunshot thundered in the hall, instantly silencing the raging masses and sending some members of the Holy See cowering beneath their desks. Papers fell from their grasp and knocked glasses rolled off tables to smash on the flagstones of the hall. Grand Inquisitor Düül stepped forward into the middle of the auditorium, pushing his smoking revolver back into his white holster, his hob-nailed boots crunching hard on the polished wooden floor.
“I think everyone needs to calm down a little,” he announced, looking around the circle of Cardinals and making no effort to hide his disgust. “These pitiful lamentations, your childlike hysterics, they are not becoming of our great faith. It was not built upon fear and weakness, but proud valour and strength, attributes we still retain, particularly in the Inquisition. You all know my methods. For too long you, the Holy See, have debated and considered, safe within your halls and chambers, while people, our people, are dying and a darkness is growing within the Vatican and beyond. No more.” He shook his head slowly, before turning to the Secretary of State. “From this moment, I’m taking control. I’m deciding policy within the Holy See.”
“Is this some sort of coup, Grand Inquisitor?” asked Korek.
“Let’s call it a temporary seizure of power, shall we, until this latest incursion is brought under control?”
“Very good,” nodded Casado, bowing his head and linking his fingers together to stop them trembling. “What do you propose?”
“To take the fight to the enemy. They have dared to enter our capital city and they will pay the ultimate price for such a sacrilege. At this very moment the wolves are being hunted and killed in the streets. I’ve received assurances that they’ll be brought under control within the hour.”
Something resembling a ripple of applause responded to this assured announcement. Düül ignored it.
“Meanwhile, I’m going to bring the dog Tacit to heel. Personally. He’s still here, within Rome. We’ve got a lead on him. He slipped out of Trastevere Monastery a short time ago. The rumours you’ve heard are true. He’s murdered Sister Malpighi. He’s gone rabid but will be put down before the night is over. My men are in pursuit right at this moment. Once we have him contained, I’ll drag him in front of you to explain himself. You can all get your answers from him then, about this so-called ritual, about who else, if anyone, is involved. About what it all means. And once you’re done with him, he’ll never trouble the Holy See or our faith again. That is my assurance to the house. No one makes a mockery of the Inquisition and lives.”
“Of course,” nodded Casado. “But what exactly will you do with him, Grand Inquisitor Düül?”
Düül threw back his white gown to reveal the array of weaponry at his belt. “Like I said, nobody steps out of line in my Inquisition. Tacit killed a lot of good men in Toulouse Inquisitional Prison, and now he’s killed a lot in the Vatican and Travestere Monastery, not to mention Sister Malpighi. When I finally get to work on him, he’ll wish he never set foot within Rome, let alone the Inquisition. Salamanca’s methods will seem like therapy to him in comparison. I’ll take the skin from his back and hang it as a warning to all others in the inquisitional hall.”
SIXTY EIGHT
CONSTANTINOPLE. TURKEY. OTTOMAN EMPIRE.
A blood moon had climbed above the Constantinople skyline, dusk the colour of slaughter. Ragged columns of civilians, Armenian men, women and children, were leaving the city, long snaking lines shepherded by armed guards heading north while behind them calls to prayer rang out from minarets across the city. The excited shriek of Turkish children playing in the streets of their newly emptied capital rose up from the myriad of twisted thoroughfares and squares to meet the exotic smells of evening feasts being prepared in the houses above.
“Sounds like they have starting deporting Armenians,” announced a fat Turkish man as he worked a date into his mouth from the plate in front of him. He stared down over the balcony which overlooked the Galata neighbourhood.
“Finally,” replied Mahmut Sadik. The trader had made his fortune shipping exotic spices and silks into the west through his privately owned ca
ravan lines, but was always generous in sharing his wealth and hospitality and his home with his closest friends. He sat up on one arm and admired the rings on his fingers.
“Never been an advocate of our Armenian neighbours, have you, Mahmut?” asked a dark-skinned man sitting alongside his host.
“Impudent and feckless,” replied Sadik, shaking his head so his ample chin wobbled. “Let’s just say I’ve never trusted them enough to use their kind as workers on any of my operations. And I know of few other traders who have found them satisfactory employees. If Armenians are unwilling to contribute to our society, then they are deserving of no place within our city.”
“Or elsewhere within the empire,” added his friend opposite, and the ebony-skinned man motioned in agreement. “I hear we’re building them their own city?”
“A necropolis,” nodded Sadik, “out in the sands.”
“And they dare to call us oppressors? Ungrateful wretches!”
A line of women bearing trays laden with plates of delicacies filed onto the balcony and towards the table where the three businessmen sat waiting.
“At last!” cheered the fat Turk, smacking his meaty lips. “I feared I might die of hunger!”
Choice dishes of vibrant colours and enticing smells were arranged on the low table and goblets filled with cool water.
“Please,” announced Sadik, waving his hands over the food. “Enjoy!”
He waited for this friends to help themselves before spooning a generous serving of fragrant rice onto his own dish and promptly into his mouth.
He didn’t gag, not at first, but he hesitated, thinking it strange how the rice teased against his tongue, as if the individual grains were alive. Moving. He chewed, working the mouthful around, tasting a bitterness he’d not experienced from one of his favourite dishes before. For he only ever procured the best ingredients and employed only the finest chefs to prepare them. But there was no doubt that something was awry in the taste of the dish.
At once he spat his mouthful into his hand and his eyes grew large. Maggots, foul engorged red maggots, writhed and twisted in the half-chewed remains in his open palm. Sadik leapt up, cursing, fighting against the urge to vomit, sending plates flying and alarming his fellow diners. He stared with growing horror across the table. For all the dishes were now moving, pulsating and throbbing, every dish was heaving with maggots, rotten, fouled.
And, at the very same time, all across the city, at every dining table, restaurant and café, citizens spat their food from their mouths in revulsion and shock as the plague descended.
SIXTY NINE
THE VATICAN. VATICAN CITY.
“Clearly I missed something while I was away?” said Strettavario, remarking on the frenzied activity within the Vatican. He stepped into the Apostolic Palace and took a moment to observe.
“Where have you been?” demanded a voice Strettavario recognised at once. Casado looked more exhausted than ever, his skin flaccid and grey like that of a dying man.
“Here and there,” replied the Priest, watching as a troop of Inquisitors marched the entire breadth of the palace before slipping from view behind pillars. “I see the Inquisition is no longer trying to hide their existence?”
“I don’t need to remind you, Father Strettavario, that you are still under the employ of the Holy See,” replied Casado, ignoring the comment. “It is not your place to go here and there as you choose.”
“I had no assignments.”
“So you made your own.” Casado seized Strettavario’s sleeve, his hand like a claw. “You ensured Tacit’s escape!”
“I gave him the tools to escape.”
“Whatever were you thinking?” Casado hissed the words so as not to draw attention to them. “It was not your place to do so!”
“They would have killed him had he not been released. I am sure you would not have wanted that, Cardinal Bishop Casado. At least not until your questions had answers.” There was a searching tone in the pale-eyed Priest’s voice.
“Do you know the problems you’ve caused?”
“I suspect the problems were caused when someone decided to chain what cannot be chained. If you wanted Tacit removed, you should have killed him when you had the chance, not tortured him with idle fascination.”
“They’re going to kill him anyway. Grand Inquisitor Düül has taken personal responsibility for his apprehension and punishment.”
“Then Grand Inquisitor Düül is going to be deeply disappointed. This is Tacit we’re talking about.”
“This is a murderer we’re talking about!” He drew close to the Priest, an aroma of incense and garlic clinging to him. “Don’t put him on any pedestal, Father Strettavario. He is a criminal.”
Strettavario smiled, a sly cold smile. “Yes, Tacit is many things. A killer? A murderer?” Strettavario weighed the charges on his lips and found himself in agreement with the senior Cardinal. “Perhaps. But he is not a criminal, not unless the tasks we give him are criminal in themselves and so make him one.”
“He killed Sister Malpighi.”
Strettavario laughed, making no attempt to subdue his reaction. At once Casado took him more firmly still, guiding him to the shadows at the side of the hall. “We both know he did not kill Sister Malpighi,” Strettavario said.
“So who did then?”
And at once Strettavario’s pale eyes seemed to darken. “Do you really need to ask?”
“Which is why Tacit must be stopped.”
“So that is what you think, is it? That he is one aligned with the Lord of Darkness?” He looked away across the hall, disgusted. “Is that what you have been trying to prove, with these acts of torture Inquisitor Salamanca was requested to perform? An attempt to draw the Devil out of him? Reveal his secrets to you?”
“We prefer to think of them as experiments and observations.”
Strettavario was impressed that the Cardinal had at least made no attempt to lie or feign ignorance over what they had done to the man in that prison cell. “From the very beginning you’ve wondered, haven’t you, Cardinal? About him. About who he is. What guides him. What empowers him. How that power could be harnessed, understood. Channelled.”
“It is our role within the Holy See to observe and act in order to benefit the brotherhood and our faith.”
“Then you should have observed that Tacit cannot be controlled. He answers to no man. He goes wherever his path demands he goes. For so long you have shackled him, bound him by faith and blinded him with rhetoric from the Holy law, turning him to your needs and your gain. But the bonds have broken loose, the blind has slipped. The beast has broken free. And who knows where or when he will stop in his rampaging?”
Strettavario stepped out from the shadows, but almost immediately Casado called after him.
“Is there really nothing which can be done?”
“Yes, there is something,” said Strettavario. “Pray.”
SEVENTY
THE VATICAN. VATICAN CITY.
Antonio Fellacuti was eighty-seven and almost blind. Crippled with arthritis and twisted like a gnarled tree root, for the last seventy-two years he’d been a presence within the Vatican, as constant as the hymns and psalms resonating through the great halls and churches of the city. Still today he walked the corridors of the Vatican, his bucket of lukewarm water gripped tight in his right hand. Perhaps his passage through the city was slower these days, maybe the water sloshed a little more frequently from the bucket’s rim as he walked, but he still cleaned every statue, washed every floor, burnished every handle in the Vatican as he had done as a young man over seventy years ago. He knew of nothing else, certainly nothing which could bring him such joy.
He’d long dreamt of entering the Church as a servant of God, a deacon, a Priest or even, should God show him good fortune, perhaps a Bishop? Every night, as he retired to his bed, prayers were always on his tongue, God within his thoughts, his dreams never tarnished by impropriety or sin. Even in sleep he believed himself pure.
He never did find service within the Church in his lifetime, not as one of the cloth, his ability with words and people considered inappropriate for one to lead congregations. But he had since realised that, by cleaning the Vatican, he was in many ways more than doing his service to God and his faith. After all, cleanliness was godliness.
Every cranny and surface of every statue he knew by touch alone. Every turn of every chin, every bridge of every nose, he could detect and name by his fingers. His eyes might not be able to see the dirt nearly so well as when he was young, but what he had lost in sight, he made up for in his ability to feel. Seven decades on, people still commented on how spotless the Vatican was when Antonio had been at work.
Antonio was pleased to be working this evening in St Peter’s Basilica. It was his favourite part of Vatican City, and while the great halls were vast and cold, particularly with the city seemingly caught in the grip of a strange chill this evening, the majesty of the building couldn’t help but warm Antonio’s heart and fire his emotions.
He’d set his small ladder to the lip of the marble column on which Michelangelo’s Pietà was placed and climbed it slowly, one rung at a time, setting his feet next to each other to ensure he was balanced before tackling the rung above, the bucket set in the crook of his right arm, his grey dull eyes staring blindly straight ahead. The statue of Mary with the crucified body of Jesus laid across her lap appeared more a worked lump of incandescent marble to Antonio’s eyes than the exquisite piece of sculpture it was, but when the old man’s hands began to feel the daring contours and delicate mastery of the marble, at once it came alive, a work of wonder and divine glory beyond comprehension. As he always did with this statue, he took out his finest of cloths, silk with just a little water to more easily remove any dust from the stone.
How it glistened in front of him, the water shimmering off the perfectly smooth marble to dazzle even his dull failing eyes. Something which sounded like thunder reached his ears. He shrugged and thought it strange for summer storms to have set in so early in the year. And then something which sounded like a wolf’s howl. Most bizarre, wolves in Rome? He chuckled, and knew he must be tired. It would be his final sculpture this evening, he said to himself.
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