Blood of the Lamb

by Sam Cabot

  Ice sat in Livia’s stomach; she wanted to argue, but long experience of the world silenced her. Cartelli, in fact, was probably correct.

  “The new Librarian,” the Pontifex said, and Livia was grateful for his calm, measured tones, “Lorenzo Cardinal Cossa, is of the extremist camp. He would happily use the Concordat as a scourge against us. But he is bound in obedience to his Church. We believe his search for the lost copy, therefore, is his attempt to do the next best thing: to ensure this compromise never comes to light.”

  “I see,” Livia said slowly. “But if it does—”

  “If Jonah Richter were to reveal the contents of the Concordat and prove its existence, the Cardinal, we think, would be bitterly grateful. The ensuing hysteria within the Church—and around the world—would set him free to argue to the current Pope and the Church powers that nothing could restore the Church’s legitimacy but an abrogation of the Concordat and the destruction of the Noantri.”

  The Pontifex paused, then spoke like iron. “That will not happen.” His echoing voice seemed to agitate the shadows, to make the bones dance on the candlelit walls. Livia did not doubt him. One of the Eldest, the Pontifex was a man of great learning, wise judgment, and respected counsel. And something more, also: a depth and delicacy of understanding of the Community, their lives and their situation, that set him apart and above. There were those, like Jonah, who believed that they needed no Conclave and no leader and after Unveiling, would have none. But while they had a leader, no Noantri had ever argued that another was more suited than this man.

  In a quiet voice, the Pontifex spoke again. “That Cardinal Cossa has not already begun this argument within the Church indicates, we believe, that he does not know about Jonah Richter’s threat. Nor will he. As I said, if you make no progress in your search for the Concordat, the Conclave will attend to Jonah Richter. But there will be other Jonahs, other cardinals. Until the world becomes more enlightened, this danger will be with us. The document must be recovered.”

  In the silence, all eyes rested upon Livia. It seemed to her she was seeing the Pontifex, the entire Conclave, from a great distance; but with exquisite clarity just the same.

  “The priest,” she heard herself say. “Father Kelly.”

  “You will need him,” the Pontifex replied. “We’re fairly certain Mario Damiani left instructions of some sort to the place where he hid the Concordat, where Jonah Richter stumbled upon it.”

  “‘Stumbled upon’!” Cartelli scoffed. “More likely, has been obsessively searching for under our very noses.”

  “Perhaps,” the Pontifex said evenly. “In any case, Mario Damiani was a man with enormous contempt for the Church. A very intelligent man, also. He would have understood the Concordat might have to pass decades, perhaps centuries, in its hiding place. Concealing it on Church property would be a sensible decision: Church-owned buildings are the last to be demolished, are rarely even renovated beyond minimal structural repair. Such a course would have appealed to Damiani’s sense of irony, also. He’d have chosen carefully, appropriately. If Jonah Richter has already located the document’s hiding place, an expert in Church history might be able to right the balance.”

  “Also,” said Cartelli drily, “we do not like the idea of a priest running around loose, digging into our past. We’d like an eye kept on him.”

  “So you want me to enlist Father Kelly in my search?”

  “Or offer to aid his,” said the Pontifex. “An art historian who’s lived a long time in Rome—you could be valuable to him. Our information is that Father Kelly is an obsessive researcher. He’s been charged with an important task. He might welcome the help. But bear in mind, the priest has no deadline and feels no sense of urgency. We do.”

  “If he refuses?”

  “Persuade him.”

  “If that involves telling him—the truth? About the Noantri?”

  The Counsellors glanced at one another. The Pontifex didn’t take his eyes off Livia. “Then you will tell him. We have debated this. Father Kelly is a scholar of great achievement and deep intellectual curiosity. It strains credulity to think that Cardinal Cossa expected once he found the Concordat, he would not read it.”

  “Does he believe as Cardinal Cossa does, about us?”

  “They all do,” Cartelli said with disgust.

  The Pontifex, for the first time, turned on Cartelli a look of mild impatience; but he didn’t correct her.

  “If Father Kelly doesn’t yet know the contents of the Concordat, he most likely doesn’t know the truth of our existence, either,” he said. “But Cardinal Cossa has been grooming this young man for some time. He probably intended to make him privy to that secret as he advanced in the Church. Father Kelly will almost certainly know one day.”

  “And so you are giving me permission to tell him now?”

  “My,” Cartelli said, “why suddenly so obedient? I don’t recall you asking for permission the last time.”

  Livia’s cheeks burned. The last time: when she had told Jonah. Revealed what she was, who the Noantri were. She had wanted to share with him the deepest part of herself, and to make him comprehend her certainty and her fears: what could be theirs in a life together, and what could not. The risk had been that he’d react as so many always had, with fear, with revulsion. She’d wanted him to know she understood that and was willing to take that chance, for him. From the start of time lovers had promised to climb the highest mountain, swim the deepest ocean, to prove their love, but Livia had offered Jonah a greater gift: their love itself, to claim or destroy.

  And he’d been neither afraid nor repulsed. Nor merely accepting. Amused, at first, believing she was joking with him. Then, once persuaded, he was thrilled, and soon was asking, pleading, to join her. To be Noantri, too. She had thought, at the time, that it was from love. That he wanted to be everything she was.

  “Livia.” The dark voice came to her as though from far away. “Livia. You must begin.” She looked up to see the Pontifex leaning forward in the flickering light. “Time is short.” He smiled a tiny smile, acknowledging the irony in that statement.

  “My Lord,” she said. “I may not succeed.”

  He shook his head. “You will. You will search until you find the Concordat. If the deadline is near and you haven’t found it yet, you will continue the search and we will see to Jonah Richter.” He sat back again. “Jonah cannot escape this sentence, Livia. It will be far better for him if you are the one to carry it out.”

  The Counsellors, the Pontifex, all sat motionless, eyes on Livia in the candlelit gloom. She had been given her instructions and dismissed; she understood that. Still, in a shocking breach of protocol, as though she were not part of the proceedings, but only watching, she heard her own voice whisper, “Is there no other way?”

  The Pontifex may have been about to speak, but Cartelli slapped the arm of her chair. The sound rattled like a gunshot. “What other way? Are you a fool, too? Or”—her eyes narrowed in her wrinkled face—“are you in sympathy with Jonah Richter? Do you, also, believe the time for Unveiling has come?”

  Livia shook her head. “No, no. I wish I could say I think so. But I don’t believe it has.”

  “Then go. Do as you’ve been told. Or six centuries of peace will be destroyed. The fires will come again. In fear and raging fury we will be hunted, driven out, and we will die. You did not know those times. I did. We did.” She nodded to the Pontifex, to a few of the others. “All this will be repeated, magnified a thousand times, if the world learns once again whom to label ‘vampire.’”

  8

  The blue eyes that had watched Livia Pietro enter the church now saw her emerge, pale and shaken. She shut the door gently, as though it were fragile, and stood unmoving on the cobblestones until a gust tangled her long black hair. That seemed to wake her: she smoothed her hand over her head and put on her hat. The watcher’s heart leapt.
He remembered the feel of her hair, thick and untamed, under his own hand. Her skin, also, supple velvet despite her age. He smiled, understanding now what he hadn’t the first time he touched her: the full and double meaning there. And the scent of her. He stood behind a closed window in a flat across Via Giulia, so what stirred him now must be not real, but remembrance. Still, he caught his breath. Few of the Noantri wore perfume. To senses awakened by the Change, the world offered sights, sounds, and aromas in infinite and startling intricacy. Not the least of these was the scent of one another; few cared to mask or even augment this signature. With this, as with so many of the Community’s customs, his Livia was out of step. She delighted in a range of essences, rare and delicate, each applied with a fine hand—and each acting on him differently but irresistibly. He had tried, so many times and in so many ways, to persuade her of what was clear to him: that her unconcern with Noantri convention proved that what she claimed to want—a comfortable, invisible, assimilated life—was not her real desire.

  His Livia. He shook his head. He still thought of her that way. They hadn’t spoken in more than two years, and if he was correct, she’d just been instructed to kill him.

  Jonah Richter had known his letter to the Conclave would call them into full battle mode—meaning, first, mind-numbing assemblies and debates. Ultimately, though, they’d have to act. He suspected he knew what form their response would take, and apparently he’d been right. Livia had been Summoned, had gone in looking apprehensive, and come out looking like hell. Maybe he was flattering himself; but if the Conclave had been as alarmed by his threat as he expected, his destruction was an obvious solution. Livia—the Noantri who had Made him and thus the only Noantri inherently dangerous to him—was its obvious agent.

  Many of his friends, Noantri who believed as he did about Unveiling, claimed the Noantri were superior to the Unchanged. Some had taken, in fact, to ostentatiously dropping “Unchanged” in favor of “Mortal,” a label so fraught that its use had been abandoned by the Community long ago. The extremist opinion held that, far from being forced into hidden, constricted lives, the Noantri ought to rule. That their fine sensibilities, acquired wisdom, and distant view of unrolling time made them better suited to governing than were the limited Unchanged.

  Jonah did not share this viewpoint, and he sniffed the stench of egotism in those who did. He suspected that each saw himself—or herself—as the Emperor of All when the transition came. And he remained skeptical at the idea that it was possible to benignly rule those who were, not to put too fine a point on it, your food source.

  The vision shared by Jonah and his group was a different one. After Unveiling, the Unchanged would understand two things: that the Noantri were not a threat; and that to be Noantri was to live so completely, to have senses so finely tuned and a mind so fully awake, that everyone would want to Change.

  And where would nourishment come from, when all blood was Noantri blood? The would-be Emperors sneered this question in the Noantri coffeehouses and bars, the baths and gathering places. The answer—offered patiently by partisans like Jonah, edgily by those less tolerant—was: science. Human blood, after all, was only a chemical compound. It could be cloned, synthesized, grown. Why not? Promising work was already coming out of Japan. More would follow. Until then, the Unchanged already donated blood by the barrelful, some of which found its covert way to the Noantri as it had for centuries. More to the point, many sold their blood to pay their rent or buy their beer. Why wouldn’t they keep that practice up, especially at the prices the Noantri could offer?

  The arguments went on and on. Talk of Unveiling was everywhere; according to those Elder than Jonah, it always had been, since the day the Concordat was signed. The Conclave had no objection to the discussion, in fact was willing at any time to hear a new line of reasoning pro or con. The position of the Conclave, however, had never yet been affected by argument. Unveiling would happen in time; this was not the time.

  But it was. Jonah was tired of hearing the arguments. He was tired of pretending, of evading questions with a smile. He had become afraid, suddenly, of losing the friends of his youth, as he saw them change, saw their faces line and their eyes soften. Livia had tried to comfort him, telling him these losses were part of the dark side of Noantri life, unavoidable and balanced by so much else. She repeated to him an aphorism, a saying of the Noantri: The Unchanged change; only the Changed remain unchanging. But her voice held sorrow as she thought of people she’d loved, long gone; and far from being persuaded to accept his friends’ bad fortune, Jonah had begun to see an entirely different course of action.

  Livia, he thought now, as he watched her turn and start slowly down the street. You’ll come to understand. This is, without question, the right thing. Even the members of the Conclave will be glad this happened, once it’s over. Then maybe—maybe—you and I can be together again. In any case, don’t worry; you won’t be killing me.

  9

  In the vast, marble-floored hush of the Vatican Library’s Manoscritti Reading Room, Father Thomas Kelly jotted on a notepad, then pocketed his pencil to keep his bad habit at bay. No pencil-tapping here. Along with no photography, no food or drink, no ink pens, and no humming to yourself. And no touching the books without white cotton gloves. Ah, intellectual freedom.

  Not that he minded the restrictions, really. He was amazed just to be here. He wanted nothing more than to wander through the bright rooms, along shadowed corridors, past towering windows, and across the thresholds of low, hidden doors. He yearned to unlatch cabinets, slide drawers, climb ladders. But you couldn’t. You sat and looked through the electronic catalog, a legacy of a previous Librarian’s reorganization of the treasures in his charge. You requested the items you wanted to study, and they were delivered to you.

  Thomas’s clerical collar brought him considerable deference from the staff, but he had no freer access than any other scholar. Lorenzo, of course, could have arranged for Thomas to enter any room he wanted, handle any document he cared to, without interference. That arrangement would have been highly unusual, though, and would not pass unnoticed. Because of the sensitive nature of Thomas’s research, Lorenzo had asked him to work within the system. “Unless it becomes absolutely necessary,” he’d added. “If it is, let me know and I’ll say the word.”

  Thomas had been tempted, just so he could wander those corridors; but that would be overweening and wrong. For the task Lorenzo had charged him with, the system was working fine. Right now, better than fine.

  A day of intense research here, added to the work he’d been doing in London for the past few years, had Thomas convinced he was one of the world’s leading experts on the looting of the Vatican Library in 1849. That, in itself, was no great accomplishment; but he was also more sure than ever that it was then that Sottotenente Mario Damiani—who, braggart though he may have been, did actually seem to have led the raid—had stolen the Concordat. What the Concordat was and why this mattered so much, Thomas still had no idea. All in good time, though: Lorenzo had brought him here to discover its hiding place, not its meaning.

  Methodical scholar that Thomas was, he’d spent his first afternoon following the few faint trails the first search team had found, just to make sure they’d missed nothing. When those trails faded out, he’d gone back to his original thought, and began tracking down Mario Damiani.

  All day yesterday he’d uncovered nothing but the facts of Damiani’s life and work and his service in Garibaldi’s Republican Army. Some of what he found was straight information, and some of it had to be read between the lines; some he’d already known and some he hadn’t; much was of interest to the scholar in him but little to the newly minted detective. But with the fresh new morning came a new thought and a hopeful find.

  Damiani had written in Romanesco, the traditional dialect of Rome, a choice of some Republican patriots of his era that Thomas, if he were being honest, would have to call a self-limiting aff
ectation. In Thomas’s opinion, Romanesco wasn’t different enough from Italian to make using it the statement of fierce independence the partisans intended; it was, though, just different enough to be irritating to the Italian speaker trying to read it. For scholarly purposes Thomas had long since become fluent in Romanesco, as well as a number of other Italian dialects, dead and living. Hoping to get an idea of who Mario Damiani had really been, of how he’d thought and therefore where he might have taken something as precious as the Concordat, Thomas had requested the Library’s volumes of Damiani’s works. When they arrived they told him little, but by then he was off on a different trail.

  Waiting for the volumes to be excavated from whatever deep vault they were buried in, he’d stayed at the catalog computer and clicked idly through the list of other Romanesco poets, thinking perhaps the works of Damiani’s fellow fiery patriots might help his project of getting inside the man’s mind. The catalog included thumbnail images, usually the front covers of the works in question. Some seemed promising, and Thomas slipped his pencil from his pocket once or twice to make notes, books to request later if he needed them. At the end of the list he found a grouping of uncategorizable odds and ends: letters, records, fragments. An item listed as “Poems, handwritten, anonymous, damaged” caught his eye. He clicked on the thumbnail image to enlarge it. The item was a pasteboard-covered notebook, bent and beat. How extensive the damage to the pages might be, Thomas couldn’t tell, but the front cover was in good enough shape that he could read the handwritten inscription on it: Poesie d’Amore, per Trastevere, Gennaio 1847. Love Poems, for Trastevere, January 1847. He hadn’t been able to make out the words when the image was small, but the handwriting had seemed familiar. Now he could see he was right: it was Damiani’s.