by Sam Cabot
Of course, Giulio Aventino must be the reason the maresciallo was hesitating at all over Raffaele’s instructions. The work Raffaele should have been doing right now, whether in the office or in the field, would naturally have fallen to his partner. Giulio, with his mustached hangdog face, dislike of paperwork, short temper with technology, and aversion to the Church, had no doubt been grousing nonstop for the past hour and a half about his missing sergeant. This would’ve been true if the maresciallo had given Raffaele the afternoon off to see the dentist; how much truer was it now, when Giulio was left to shoulder their mutual burden because Raffaele was running some nepotistic errand for a cardinal?
Finally the maresciallo growled into his ear, “Stay with it. Follow her.”
Curia one, Giulio nothing. Raffaele grinned to himself. But his boss’s vacillation, though short, had been just long enough to bring up another problem. “They’re heading for the church.”
“What church, Orsini? Where are you?”
“Sorry, sir. Santa Maria della Scala. In Trastevere.”
“They’re going in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And one’s a priest?” Another moment of thought, much more brief. “Don’t go in after them. All we’ve been asked to do is to keep track of the woman. You sure it’s her?”
“I have a photo.”
“Well, whatever they’re doing in there, they’ll have to come out eventually. Wait for them. I don’t want you barging into a church. It’s always a nightmare even if a crime’s been committed, and we don’t know that one has. Besides,” he added, “I know Santa Maria della Scala. It’s small enough that they might notice you.”
Showing off, Raffaele thought, but the maresciallo couldn’t see his smile and he said nothing.
“Just wait for them,” his boss said again. “If they go back to that house, keep up your surveillance. If they go somewhere else, follow them, but, Orsini, keep trying your uncle. I want you back here sometime today. Aventino is driving us all mad.”
29
Across the cobbled piazza, through the wrought-iron fence, and up the stairs. Not the scala for which the church was named; those had belonged to a nearby, long-ago-demolished house. There the miracle of an ill child’s recovery had been granted to a mother praying to an icon in a stairway alcove. Thomas hadn’t been to Santa Maria della Scala before, but he knew the story. He knew so many of his Church’s stories.
The entry doors stood open. Thomas paused minutely and then stepped through as though he were any priest, in the company of any pair of historians, visiting any church in Rome. He felt acutely the presence of Livia Pietro beside him and that of Spencer George a few paces behind. Could they really enter a church? Step onto consecrated ground as easily as he could? A part of him expected—no, admit it, hoped—that they would be struck down at the threshold, reduced to dust and ashes for defiling the sanctified air. Though it was true his crucifix had had no effect. Nor had the mid-morning light in the piazza, any more than the glare of the early sun through which he’d raced with Livia Pietro from the Vatican Library, back in the good old days a few hours ago when he thought she was merely insane.
Livia Pietro followed him and Spencer George followed her and they all crossed the wooden sill and nothing happened. Resigned, Thomas turned through the vestibule to the right-side door. He pushed it open and stopped a few steps in at the marble font to dip his fingers into the holy water and cross himself, perhaps a bit more fervently than usual. He was horrified by the idea that Pietro or Spencer George, as an element of subterfuge, might attempt to do the same. But maybe they couldn’t? Maybe contact with holy water would do to them what the sight of a crucifix had not? Maybe they’d melt, and sizzle, and— Stop it, he ordered himself, you sound like a Dominican. Pietro looked at the font, at him, smiled slightly, and shook her head. Spencer George passed the font without a glance.
Thomas, behind them now, found himself blinking in the dimness. He squinted to adjust his eyes while Pietro slipped off her sunglasses and seemed quite comfortable. Spencer George had also donned shades and hat as they left his house, even for the brief walk across the piazza. It must be habitual with them. Every time they go outdoors, the way a real person, a human person, puts on clothes. Thomas suddenly flashed on a college friend, an affable physicist who wore photosensitive glasses, their lenses darkening automatically at the first touch of bright light. . . . And a baseball cap, the physicist was rarely seen without his baseball cap . . . No. It couldn’t be.
Thomas shuddered that thought off. He couldn’t bear, suddenly, the close presence of the two Noantri. He strode along the center aisle toward the altar. Of course they followed. What had he expected? To avoid the sight of them, Thomas looked up, down, around. Santa Maria della Scala was itself a miracle, though a common enough miracle in Rome: its sedate, slightly crumbling façade opened from a small, dark entry into an interior well kept, grand, and imposing. A patterned stone floor—incorporating, as in so many churches, gravestones, identifying the dead who slept beneath your feet—polished wood pews, a soaring vaulted ceiling supported on marble columns; and everywhere, art. None of it, on first glance, exceptional, but its profusion making up for its lack of distinction. Paintings, frescoes, sculpture, gilded candlesticks. Crystal chandeliers over the altar and side chapels, the gift of some pious—or guilt-ridden—nineteenth-century worshipper. They struck an odd note, the chandeliers. But every church had its own oddnesses, its own eccentricities. Its own secrets.
They had come here to find one of those secrets. Father Thomas Kelly, SJ, and two vampires. Thomas felt his composure hanging by a thread.
He stopped at the altar rail, and the other two stopped beside him. “What do we do now?” Thomas spoke not out of hope of an answer, but to keep himself from losing hold.
“I think we were anticipating you’d take the lead from this point, Father Kelly,” Spencer George replied. He had, Thomas noted, removed his hat. Anger flared in Thomas at the hypocrisy of the gesture.
“Just how do you expect me to do that? I didn’t know Mario Damiani. I’ve never been in this church before. I first heard of the Concordat just a few days ago and I can’t tell you how dearly I wish I never had!”
“Father.” Livia Pietro spoke softly, laying a hand on his sleeve. She nodded toward two old women lighting candles in a side chapel.
Thomas pulled back from her touch and dropped his voice to a sarcastic whisper. “Of course, we mustn’t disturb the faithful. I know how that upsets you.”
Spencer George rolled his eyes. Pietro said, “Actually, it does. I was raised in the same Church you were and I think faith is a precious thing, to be protected wherever it’s found. But I know you don’t believe that of me and I’m not asking you to. I’m suggesting that you focus on the reason we’re here.”
Thomas stared at her for a long moment. Then he blew out a breath and looked around helplessly.
Santa Maria della Scala had nave and transept, it had side chapels and high windows. Great bouquets of flowers had greeted them at the church entry with still more standing in the side chapels and others flanking the altar. Because Mass had recently ended, thick incense hung heavy in the air, threading its scent through that of the flowers. What footsteps and soft words were to be heard did not disturb the peaceful hush common to so many churches. It was all comforting and familiar, and Thomas thought he felt a faint echo of his old sense of home.
But as to a hiding place for a six-hundred-year-old document that detailed a satanic bargain, he could think of none.
“This church,” Spencer George said. “What’s special about it?”
“You live across the piazza from it! You should know it much better than I do!”
“Really, Father? How much time do you imagine I’ve spent here? What is it you’re thinking I would do if I came? Kneel and pray?”
“No, I can see there’d be no point.
Even prayer can’t save your mortgaged soul!”
“Then why would I come?”
“Spencer?” Pietro said, speaking to the historian but throwing Thomas a disapproving glance. “Did Mario come here?”
Spencer George unlocked his gaze slowly from Thomas’s and looked to Pietro. He nodded. “He loved them all, these little churches. Loved them as art and as history. Once or twice I came inside this one with him. It had always been one of his particular favorites, and he became even more strongly attached to it during the Rebellion because it served as a field hospital for Garibaldi’s troops. Mario was an officer in the war against papal power, you know.” Spencer George looked pointedly at Thomas again. Thomas bit his lip and refused to rise to the bait. “Mario’s mission,” George went on, “the mission he’d given himself, was to take these little jewels back from the stranglehold of the Church and return them to aesthetics and to true spiritual meaning.”
“True spiritual meaning?” Thomas hissed, finally unable to contain himself. “As though there were some question? Of the spiritual meaning of a church?”
“As it happens I agree with you. I thought his whole project was absurd. I’ve spent nearly three centuries in Rome avoiding every church I could.”
“You’d have done better—”
“Father? Maybe we can have this conversation later?” As she spoke, Livia Pietro looked back up the center aisle. An elderly monk moved stiffly toward them, his cinctured tan habit whispering. Pietro and George smiled in greeting. Thomas struggled to do the same.
“Buongiorno, Padre,” the monk greeted Thomas.
“Buongiorno, Padre,” Thomas replied. He continued in Italian, “I’m Thomas Kelly. From Boston. This is Dr. Pietro and—Dr. George. They’re historians. As I am,” he added.
“Giovanni Battista. Welcome to Santa Maria della Scala.” The monk’s thin hands were misshapen by arthritis, and his voice rattled with an old-man quaver.
“Thank you,” Pietro replied politely. Spencer George murmured some noncommittal courtesy, also, though Thomas could swear his lip was curled. Pietro continued diffidently, “We’ve come here as part of a project. We’re studying the art and history of Trastevere’s churches. Each church is unique in some way and we’re very interested in seeing the special pieces here.”
Father Battista’s thin smile told Thomas the monk was well aware of his church’s relative lack of artistic riches. Nevertheless, he answered, “Then I’m sure you’ll want to see the icon of Our Lady, that holy painting that cured the child. It’s in the transept altar, on this side.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to lead the way. Not knowing what else to do, Thomas started after him, peering around, hoping for—what? A ray of heavenly light to strike a painting, an angelic chorus to sing as he passed a piece of sculpture? He walked behind Father Battista, surveying the sanctuary, listening distractedly to the monk’s sandals slapping softly on the stone.
Sandals.
Father Battista was a Discalced Carmelite.
Discalced. Shoeless.
“Shoeless” meaning in sandals, not barefoot. They didn’t go barefoot.
But they and their order’s founder, Saint Teresa of Avila, were often portrayed that way. Even Bernini’s celebrated sculpture of Saint Teresa depicted one bare foot peeking from under her robe.
the humblest of steps . . .
right foot then left, that leads the soul . . .
“The relic!” Thomas burst out.
The monk stopped and turned. “Father?”
“The relic,” Thomas repeated, stopping also. He brought his voice under control, which could not be said of his racing heart. “Santa Teresa. It’s here, isn’t it? I’d like very much to see the relic.”
Spencer George furrowed his brow. Livia Pietro gave Thomas a quizzical look, but Thomas kept his eyes on Father Battista.
A new interest softened the monk’s lined face. “I have to admit that’s a pleasant change,” he said. “The veneration of relics is out of fashion lately.” He gave Thomas a tentatively commiserating smile. Thomas returned it, though “lately” in this case was a relative term: the change dated from 1965, one of the results of the Second Vatican Council. That was before Thomas was born, so he’d come into a religious life that followed the Council’s precepts; but the elderly Father Battista had been a young man then, Thomas realized. He wondered if the monk had already taken his vows by the time the Council met. And whether, if young Giovanni Battista had known what changes were coming, he’d have entered holy orders all the same. And if he knew what Thomas knew now? About Thomas’s companions, about the Concordat’s corrupt bargain? How would he feel about his Holy Mother Church then?
“. . . quite a shame,” Father Battista was saying. Thomas forced his attention back to the monk. “Communion with the corporeal remains of a departed saint creates an atmosphere for prayer different from any other. It brings the worshipper into an intimate relationship with sanctity. It offers an immediacy that’s otherwise much more difficult to reach.”
Indeed, Thomas thought. I’ve heard that speech before. Father Battista could spend a pleasant evening over cigars and brandy with Lorenzo, discussing the mistaken direction in which the Church was headed. They could talk about relics and the Latin Mass, the apostolic calling, nuns discarding their habits. Father Battista might not even care that all Lorenzo’s piety was a lie.
A lie with which Thomas would never have the opportunity to confront Lorenzo—not in human form, anyway—unless he found the Concordat.
“Yes,” he said to Father Battista, nodding as though in earnest agreement. “I’d like very much to see the relic.”
30
“What relic is your priest dragging us off to see?” Spencer whispered to Livia as the old monk led them down the side aisle.
“I have no idea. Or why.”
She watched Father Battista and Father Kelly walk side by side a few steps ahead, a young man and an old one, sharing the same piety, the same comprehension of the world. Father Kelly’s faith had been shaken by what he’d learned today, but Livia expected—she hoped—he’d recover his equilibrium. She’d meant what she told him: she did believe faith was a precious thing. Her own was more complex than his; she wasn’t sure at all that that was a good thing, but it was a truth there was no point in denying.
She’d been raised to believe in the same God Thomas Kelly did, though she’d never been as ardent as he. Since her Change, she’d pondered often the question of a deity and also of an afterlife. As she’d told Father Kelly, Noantri could die, though she had not been completely forthcoming with him on that subject: of the three ways death could come to a Noantri, she’d described only two. What she’d said about fire was true, though, and she’d been just half-joking when she’d reassured him that they’d all be devoured when the sun flared out. What then? On that large subject, she’d come to no conclusions. But she was sure of three things.
One was that she could think of no reason why a benevolent God, Thomas Kelly’s God, could not be credited with creating the microbe that Blessed the Noantri with their long, rich lives. Thomas Kelly saw the microbe, and the Noantri, as evil. The Unchanged always had, and through the millennia when the Noantri’s need for blood nourishment had made them an imminent threat, that view had been understandable. It wasn’t true any more than evil accounted for a cat killing a mouse; but you could see the mouse’s point. Which led Livia to her second article of faith: that the Concordat was an unqualified good.
The explanation Cardinal Cossa had given Thomas Kelly of how the Concordat came to be was no more the full story than Livia’s account of the death of a Noantri had been. It was true as far as it went and so was the history she’d added for him in Spencer’s study, but there was more she knew and hadn’t told him. And there was a secret at the heart of the Concordat’s story that she didn’t know. That Martin the Fifth had seen the advanta
ges of ending the Church’s virulent and everlasting assault on the Noantri was true enough; but at the time of the Concordat, before Community, before the Law, the Noantri were a fragmented, furtive people. Calling a halt to the hunting, the persecution, was one thing, and would have permitted Martin to concentrate his strength on pressing matters of consolidating papal power. But to sign an agreement with her people, committing the Church to obligations in perpetuity? As a group, in 1431, the Noantri had commanded neither strength nor wealth enough to put in Martin’s service in exchange. Why had he done it? And why had the Church continued to abide by it through six centuries?
Possibly the answer to that last question was simple: peace was peace. Even early on, it might have been clear to Church fathers that once the Concordat was signed, the Noantri ceased being a danger. Thus the Church could turn its attention elsewhere.
As to the larger question, though, Livia had pondered it often, but had come to accept the fact that she did not, probably would never, have an answer. That knowledge was accorded to no Unchanged save the highest ranks of the Church, and to no Noantri outside the Conclave. Ultimately, though, it didn’t matter. Whatever had brought the Concordat into being was itself a Blessing.