Nephilim

by Barrowman, John; Barrowman, Carole;

  ‘I do not need your inspiriting, my love,’ he said to Em. ‘I will tell you what I remember. It is the truth. I swear, but my head is still hurting. Would you have a little liquor to ease the pain?’

  Em reached for the bottle of whisky that lived on Vaughn’s desk and pressed it into the artist’s hands. Caravaggio inhaled the rich smells of the liquid, nodded his approval and drank.

  ‘The memories of the day I supposedly died have been locked away from me for centuries,’ he said, setting down the bottle reluctantly. ‘I understand, after spending time in this century, that my inability to access my memories is a consequence of something called “post-traumatic stress”. Now I find myself remembering.’

  Outside the sun was rising, ribbons of soft light dipping in through the skylights.

  ‘I had taken something from Luca Ferrante,’ he said, ‘and I was dying from a stab wound. I was rescued by a friend and taken north. But Luca was catching up. He wanted what I had taken from him, and he would stop at nothing to get it back. My rescuer threw me from the carriage we were travelling in. I rolled down the hillside into water. And I remember … somehow, as the water was closing over my head, I was taken up by some kind of force. Everything went dark.’

  Em, Matt and Rémy leaned closer as Caravaggio’s hands trembled on the bottle.

  ‘On waking, I somehow found myself inside a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. There were bodies climbing all over me, howling and screaming, and the smell of sulphur and burning flesh. I knew I was no longer bleeding from the wound at my side, or dying for that matter, but I was suffocating. I wasn’t meant to be in that painted space. Its very essence, its gravity was fighting me. I knew if I didn’t fade fast, I’d soon be dead.’

  Rémy poured more whisky. Caravaggio gulped it, wiping his mouth with the open cuff of his sleeve. Matt took out his sketchpad and began making notes and doodles.

  ‘I used everything I had left and I faded back into the real world,’ Caravaggio said. ‘I felt as if I had been away for minutes, but discovered that it had been centuries. Five to be exact.

  ‘I was in a gallery where the walls were crowded with art. Paintings hanging from floor to ceiling. I could hear angry voices. I didn’t think I had much time. On the other side of the room, I saw another Bruegel and I could see it had an open exit.’

  Rémy opened his mouth.

  ‘A painting with an exit to another work has a distinctive glow and it must have a painting in it,’ Em explained. ‘Orion has mapped out most of the ones we use in our database, and we know where we’re heading before we leave.’

  ‘But you can fade into any painting you want, right?’

  ‘We can, but if it doesn’t have an exit then you’re caught in the world of that art.’

  Caravaggio continued. ‘I eventually faded into one of my own works, The Martyrdom of St Matthew, where unfortunately I faded too hard and hit my head, losing most of my memories of who… and what I’d done. Now those memories have returned.’ He gazed at Rémy with intense curiosity. ‘The Camarilla are offering a reward for you,’ he said.

  ‘What’s the reward?’ said Matt.

  ‘A shitload of cash, as you in this vulgar world would say.’ The artist paused, glancing again at Rémy. ‘Or eternal life in the Second Kingdom.’

  32.

  THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH

  ‘Are you sure you were bound inside a Bruegel?’ asked Em.

  ‘Do not doubt my knowledge of the masters, my love,’ said Caravaggio. ‘I’ve been inside many of them.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘In fact…’

  ‘Don’t go there,’ Matt ordered. ‘Em, the painting has to be The Triumph of Death.’

  Em typed the name into the image database and the painting appeared on the screen. She hit enlarge and print. In seconds, a full-colour quality copy of the painting shot out of a printer. Matt tore down posters from a job involving Banksy that two other agents were working on and pinned the Bruegel on the wall.

  Caravaggio’s astonishment sent threads of gold and shades of light and dark through Em’s imagination. She grabbed Matt’s charcoal and quickly sketched the image that flooded her mind.

  ‘My God, it is even more horrific than I remember,’ the artist said, staring at the painting on the screen.

  Em grabbed Caravaggio’s arm. ‘Who is this woman?’ she asked, shoving the sketch she’d drawn from his imagination under his nose.

  Caravaggio stared at the sketch, all colour draining from his face. His fear – no, his terror – hit Em like ice water.

  ‘Who is she?’ she repeated.

  ‘Her name,’ Caravaggio whispered, ‘is Sebina. Luca’s soulmate. Helen to his Paris, Chloe to his Daphnis, Eve to his Adam. She is a nephilim like Luca, but perhaps even more powerful.’

  SECOND MOVEMENT

  ‘And behold those who serve

  shall take human form.’

  Book of Songs

  33.

  DANGEROUS CROSSING

  ROME, 1610

  Below the rocky embankment where Caravaggio stood, a girl of no more than eighteen dragged a raft from the undergrowth and slid it into the shallows of the river. She waded in, holding the raft steady with her hands. Dawn was hours away.

  ‘Signore, it is safe,’ she called up to the artist.

  A light breeze rustled the trees, a merchant’s wagon stacked with barrels of wine and its team of horses rolled past on the packed dirt road, peals of laughter and drinking songs carried from revellers falling out of the closing taverns nearby. A handful of drunken sailors chased each other out on to the Pons Fabricius directly above the girl and her raft, where they howled at the moon and pissed into the river. The noises of the eternal city were familiar to Caravaggio, comforting even, but on this night Rome sounded apprehensive, the voices hollow and strained, the horses snorting too loudly, the laughter forced.

  Cloaked like a monk with a leather satchel strapped across his chest, Caravaggio slid down the hill towards the girl, grasping at branches with his free hand, trying to keep his balance. His other hand gripped a bolt of fabric wrapped in sackcloth.

  At the shore, the girl yanked a knife from the waistband of her woollen leggings, holding the blade out in front of her. Lippita’s skill with a knife was legendary. That, together with her mother’s connections to the Medici and the Borgias, had kept Lippita in business on the river longer than most. Rome operated on favours and false promises, conspiracies and confidences, and the Tiber, navigated by young people like Lippita, was the conduit that carried them between princes and popes.

  ‘Were you followed?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Caravaggio, pausing for a breath. ‘I was extra cautious. You can put that away.’

  Lippita’s lithe body was mostly muscle, except for the thick black hair that she kept short and always hidden beneath her skullcap. Like Caravaggio, she had blackened her face with soot. She slid her knife away reluctantly.

  ‘Your mother,’ Caravaggio asked, still feeling his way down the bank. ‘She is well?’

  Lippita spat into the river. ‘As well as you might expect.’

  Lippita’s mother had posed for Caravaggio more than once: his infamous Virgin Mary. But like many of the city’s unwanted children, Lippita had raised herself, her mother an infrequent presence in her life.

  Two fat water rats with mangy rumps scuttled from the undergrowth in front of Caravaggio and darted across the rocks, making him snort in disgust. The banks of the Tiber were swarming with them. Rats were about the only things living on the river that were not starving. That was why these secret journeys in the middle of the night were necessary evils. Payment for one journey out of the city would feed Lippita for a week.

  Lippita kicked one of the rats, sending it on a high arc into the water. It landed with a loud splash. Caravaggio froze, gripping a tree with his free hand. He worried it may have called attention to their passage.

  Lippita shrugged, as if reading his mind. ‘No one will notice the splash of a
rat. But, signore, we must hurry if you are to make your connection.’

  Caravaggio slid down the final few yards of the embankment on his bottom.

  ‘It is an honour, signore,’ Lippita said, helping Caravaggio to his feet. ‘Mamma adores you.’

  ‘And I she,’ said Caravaggio, kissing Lippita’s cheeks. They were warm, despite her being dressed in only a thin belted tunic and woollen leggings. Clouds crept across the moon, and darkness enveloped them. Lippita let her raft bob out into the current.

  ‘We need more light,’ Caravaggio said, fumbling his way over the rocks to the river’s edge, holding the bolt of fabric high above his head. ‘I can take care of that.’

  ‘No,’ Lippita said. ‘They may see the glow of your magic. I will manage.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘I was born on this river,’ said Lippita assuredly. ‘I know its switches and turns blindfolded. You first, signore.’

  The raft rocked as Caravaggio settled cross-legged in the middle. Lippita had over-estimated his weight, and tossed two sandbags she’d filled earlier on to the front for better balance. She climbed aboard with barely a ripple, and used her long oar to push them out into the current.

  ‘Will the canvas be safe in that roll?’ she asked, nodding at the bolt.

  ‘I will guard it with my life,’ Caravaggio replied.

  Lippita punted them past a line of tugs pulling massive blocks of marble strapped to rafts ten times the size of hers. They were heading towards Vatican City, the red ash from the captain’s pipe illuminating his skeletal face in a ghostly light that reminded Caravaggio of how difficult a dance the play of light and dark could be in both real and painted space.

  He sighed, his actions weighing as heavily on him as the bolt of fabric.

  ‘I can take your burden from you if you’d like,’ offered Lippita.

  ‘Oh, my sweet child, don’t waste your worry on me,’ he said, hugging the parcel tighter to his chest. ‘When I get this canvas out of the reach of the Camarilla, I’ll sleep better.’

  ‘Where will you hide, signore, that they cannot reach?’ Lippita’s oar entered the water silently and skilfully as she kept the raft steady in the wake of the tugs. ‘The Camarilla has spies everywhere.’

  Caravaggio found himself relaxing for the first time in days under the soft rocking of the raft. ‘I’ve arranged for my passage north,’ he told her. ‘It seems there are others fighting to keep hidden what the Camarilla seek.’

  The girl wiped her brow with her sleeve and rowed on. She nodded at the bolt of cloth. ‘Is that one of them?’

  Surprised at the question, Caravaggio glanced up at her. A strange sensation tingled through him. Slowly, he slid the bolt of cloth between his knees, balancing it on the top of his feet, keeping it from touching the seeping wet planks at the bottom of the raft. He tightened his right hand on the hilt of his sword.

  ‘This,’ he said softly, ‘this is my insurance contract.’

  They were gliding past Trastevere now, its roadside torches burning less brightly as the night deepened, their dying flames barely illuminating the poet Dante’s palace, its facade crumbling under the occupation of an indifferent descendant.

  ‘Lippita, were you ever baptized?’ he asked, leaning forward, hoping his question might distract her watchful eye from the bolt of cloth.

  ‘A strange question, signore,’ said Lippita warily, digging her oar into the murky depths, propelling them away from the thickening barge traffic. ‘I was baptized in this very river.’

  ‘Ah, of course,’ said Caravaggio. He paused, anxiously raising his hand. ‘Halt! Do you hear that?’

  She opened her mouth to reply, but Caravaggio held a finger to his lips. They floated on the current as voices, high and clear, drifted to them from above the bend of the river.

  ‘It’s the castrati from St Peter’s,’ whispered Lippita, stabbing her oar into the water. ‘They are readying for lauds.’

  ‘Not that,’ said Caravaggio, standing cautiously, the raft rocking beneath him. ‘That.’

  He pointed at the canopy of trees overhead, bending and rustling. He held his finger up. There was no wind on the river.

  ‘It is nothing.’ Lippita turned the raft into the shoreline, her shoulders tautening beneath her tunic. ‘Your rendezvous is here at this bend.’

  But for Caravaggio she had been too quick to answer, too quick to dismiss his concerns. His every muscle tensed and he held the bolt like a sceptre to steady his balance. Water slapped over his feet, splashing the fabric.

  On the shore, the trees bowed in supplication, letting the moonlight glisten on the shallow water as if stars were falling.

  34.

  RISE UP!

  The closer the raft got to the muck of the shoreline, the louder the rustling in the trees became, their limbs whipping violently. Yet the water was calm. It was impossible to ignore the racket any longer.

  ‘Perhaps the Cardinal has lost his circus bear,’ Lippita suggested.

  ‘Only if the bear has climbed into the trees,’ replied Caravaggio.

  This section of the river served the largest population of Rome, their shit flowing in torrents into the water. A rat scuttled across the rocks with a smaller rat locked in its jaw. Another, then another followed, abandoning the embankment like a sinking ship.

  ‘Something is out there,’ said Caravaggio. ‘This place is compromised. Take us from here.’

  Hundreds of rats, layers upon layers of them, were sliding into the mud now, snarling and snapping at each other’s necks and tails to get deeper into the water.

  ‘Signore, your carriage will be waiting,’ Lippita insisted. ‘I am not travelling any further with you.’

  Another chilling gust of wind flattened the trees completely, its force knocking Caravaggio into Lippita. She struggled to keep her raft from being submerged under a wave of sludge, shoved him aside and dropped prostrate on to the raft. Rats teemed across her back and legs. Not one bit or scratched her.

  ‘Dear God,’ breathed Caravaggio. ‘Who are you? What have you done?’

  Securing the bolt of fabric under his feet, he drew his sword and held its tip to Lippita’s skin. A drop of blood dribbled down the long curve of her neck on to the raft, where it sizzled lightly. Rats tore at his hem, their teeth ripping into the flesh at his calf.

  ‘Get up,’ Caravaggio snarled. ‘You—’

  Lippita leaped, driving her knife to the hilt into Caravaggio’s side, twisting twice before removing it. The artist fell backwards into the shallow water. She grabbed the bolt of cloth before it rolled from the raft.

  Caravaggio floundered. With heavy limbs and the muck holding him in its stink, he was just able to keep his head above the water. More rats swam past him, over him, under him, until he found himself carried out into the channel on their backs.

  Above the trees, a beast revealed itself, hovering like a prehistoric dragonfly above the crouching canopy. The music he’d heard earlier, the choir of boys, was now only one voice, seductive and sensual, and Caravaggio felt himself give in to its will.

  He swallowed and the muck burned his throat as the creature descended on to Lippita’s raft, the sound of its great double wings like a thousand swarming bees.

  Caravaggio’s mind was in rapture. Visions of Tomas, his favourite model, and others like him reached into the artist’s core, caressing him, loving him. With his body sinking deeper into the dirt he lifted his hand mindlessly to Tomas’s cheek.

  A rat snapped at his fingers. Searing pain shot up his arm, and Tomas vanished, leaving Caravaggio choking in the flotsam. He had to shut his mind and get away from this creature and its illusions. With a painful gasp, he dragged himself into a channel of waste pouring from the streets above, positioning his body behind a knot of twisted tree roots.

  The winged creature sat up on its haunches and reached out to Lippita. Caravaggio’s terror strangled the air from his lungs, urine warmed his breeches, the wound on his side pulsed his life into
the Tiber.

  Lippita was floating above the raft now, in the arms of a winged man more magnificent than Michelangelo’s David, whose every muscle and limb seethed with a desire that made Caravaggio’s body ache. The creature’s forewings folded in thick dark layers against his wide back, his hind wings remaining erect.

  ‘My love,’ the creature crooned. He crushed Lippita against his chest, and a soft moan escaped her lips as her ribs snapped and her spine pierced her tunic.

  The creature laid her with great care on the raft. He slipped off her skullcap, combed his tapered fingers through her short dark hair, then crouched over her like a bird with its prey as rats surged on to her broken body.

  The creature’s forewings opened. A ball of pale yellow light ballooned from the centre of Lippita’s shredded carcass and the creature’s hands worked the light like a sculptor manipulating clay. The creature’s wings enveloped the raft and for a moment there was only darkness. When it opened its wings again, a vision rose from Lippita’s body like Botticelli’s Venus.

  Caravaggio gasped in awe.

  ‘Sebina, my love,’ whispered the winged creature. ‘The artist? Where is he?’

  ‘He matters not. He is already food for the rats with my knife in his side.’

  ‘Are you certain?’

  Sebina stretched out her arms, her jet-black hair falling on her brown skin. ‘Do you doubt me?’

  He came to her. Their embrace sent drops of light out across the Tiber like a million incandescent beads on a wedding gown. It was as intimate as anything Caravaggio had ever witnessed, the passionate entwining of their limbs as pure as it was dangerous.

  Caravaggio scrawled a flagon of wine on the rocks for what he felt sure would be his last drink on this earth. He drank the animation with gusto, clutching his satchel against the crushing pain in his heart and head.

  With Sebina in his arms and the artist’s bundle of cloth in hers, the winged creature rose to the heavens and for a brief moment the two of them were silhouetted against the horned moon. Deep in the weeds, Caravaggio was dimly aware of someone dragging him from the muck.