The Black Madonna

by Peter Millar

  And then, in a succession so swift it was almost simultaneous, her would-be slaughterer fell to the floor, a zing like an angry hornet pierced the air. In the distance glass shattered. And the Great Court exploded in a wash of light from above. And the waiter, of all people, was shouting, ‘STOP or you’re all dead!’

  Gone were the soft seductive concealed lights that turned the night sky into a string bag full of stars, and in their place were halogen floodlights that poured luminescence of almost unbearable intensity into the Great Court. Dimly, like silhouettes in a magic lantern, Marcus could make out the shapes of men with long-barrelled weapons zeroing in on them from the other side of the glass roof. In one corner, a shattered pane in the tessellated weave indicated the direction of the high velocity bullet that had found its mark in Saladin’s skull.

  His erstwhile bodyguards had their hands held high. The waiter was holding his ear and talking urgently to his shirt cuff. And Nazreem was trying to sit up from the floor clutching her shoulder with blood oozing through her fingers. The nylon bag lay overturned on the floor, spilling its contents on the café floor: about a dozen heavy, dusty textbooks.

  66

  ‘Is that it?’

  In spite of himself, Marcus could not help but feel disappointment. He did not know exactly what he had expected. Not some fabulous work of art to compare with the masterpieces of the Renaissance. But maybe something that at least caught the eye. Something if not on a par with the grave goods of ancient Egypt, something that at least spoke to the soul.

  This said nothing to him. It was simplistic, primitive, devoid of any expression or artistic merit that he could discern. And yet, it was undeniably ancient – just how ancient they still had no idea, but older by far than the first century AD. And there was something about the stone itself; a matt black which somehow seemed to shine from within as if there were minerals unknown, like the ghosts of diamonds, waiting to be coaxed from its carved surface.

  It was not where he had expected first to see the supposed image of the Mother of God, a drab self-storage warehouse in west London. Marcus and Nazreem had spent twenty-four hours as ‘guests of Her Majesty’, albeit in a comfortable house in Bloomsbury. They had told a succession of interrogators everything they wanted to know. But surprisingly the one thing they had wanted to know least about was the figure Nazreem was now holding, like a human child in her left arm, notwithstanding the heavy bandage on her right shoulder. She had been lucky, the nurse who came specially to the house had told her. She would mend. Given time.

  And they would take time. Time to reassess. Old wounds and new. But before anything, he had to see, had to hold in his hands, what it had all been about. And now that he had done so, it was hard, laughably hard, to dismiss a sense of disappointment. They stood in the tiny cubicle, nine-feet square and eight feet high that Nazreem had rented, cash payment down, for a month, and wondered what it was about inanimate objects that could make human beings lay down their lives for them.

  And then the answer came from behind him.

  ‘I’ll take that, please.’

  Simultaneously they spun round to see a small, plumpish figure standing in the doorway. A dumpy woman, in a long coat.

  ‘If you don’t mind.’

  Nazreem almost dropped the figure to the ground.

  ‘Sister Galina! I don’t believe it. We thought you were …’

  ‘Dead. Yes. I know. Although as a matter of fact if it weren’t for me you are the ones who would most likely be dead.’

  The expression on Marcus’s face wasn’t exactly a smile but it almost passed for one. ‘Do you know, I almost suspected as much. It just seemed too fantastic.’ He turned to Nazreem: ‘Your fairy godmother!’

  ‘It was you, on the train?’ she said, her voice fading away.

  ‘And in Avila,’ Marcus said. ‘And in the monastery, tucking into the pasta in the far corner.’

  ‘And now, please, may I have the Mother of God? You did promise, you know, to let me spend some time with her. And that was before I saved your life.’

  There was confusion all over Nazreem’s face. ‘I don’t understand. I mean, why, how?’

  But it was Marcus who asked the question that she was just coming round to formulating: ‘For a start what led you here?’

  ‘This, it fell from your handbag in the train.’

  It took Marcus a couple of seconds to recognise that what she was holding was a blue London Transport Oyster card.

  ‘But how did that …?’

  ‘They’re very efficient, nowadays, you know, these British, much more so than their reputation. And very security conscious. You just need to touch this on a reader at any Underground station and it tells you every journey it has made. Like the one Nazreem here made, from Waterloo to Acton, on the afternoon she arrived in London.

  ‘There aren’t many reasons to come to Acton. But if you’ve got something to hide, then the presence of a secure storage facility only a short walk from the Underground is not a bad one. The only question was: which box? For the past two days, I’ve been waiting for you. Touching, isn’t it?’

  ‘That still doesn’t explain how you got in here. This is supposed to be a secure facility. There’s a security guard out there. They’re only allowed to let in customers.’

  For a microsecond the little woman’s eyes closed. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, that’s enough of this,’ she said. And then there was a gun in her hand. ‘Let’s just say he won’t be bothering us.’

  Suddenly, too late, the last vestiges of a veil of illusion fell from Nazreem’s eyes: ‘Your devotion, to the Madonna, it seemed so real, so moving, but you’re not a sister. You never were.’

  ‘No,’ interrupted Marcus. ‘In fact, you’re not even really a woman. You didn’t do it yourself, did you?’

  In a split second movement that belied her dumpiness the Glock pistol she held in her hand was pressed against Marcus’s temple.

  ‘You think you can make jokes? For centuries we have endured the scorn of people like you. I’m a sister, all right. A sister of an order that goes back longer than any Christian cult. And now I’ve come to reclaim what is ours. The sisters of Kybele have the right to their inheritance. The return of the Magna Mater is a sign.’

  ‘Galina – the Gallae. The cult the Texan was going on about. It wasn’t all lunacy. No wonder you could pass yourself off so easily as a man. You used to be one.’

  Her grip on the trigger tightened. Marcus was pushing her too far. All of a sudden Nazreem felt it was all too much. Give the woman the figurine, let her go, let her take it away and worship it. Whatever. Just leave them in peace. Before the demented creature did something foolish.

  Marcus flinched as he felt the saliva splatter against his cheek. The little creature snarling up at him had spat in his face. ‘Men! You think the phallus is the key to the world. The male sexual organs strangle your brains. Sever yourself from them and you sever yourself from their obscene domination.’

  The words jarred in Nazreem’s brain. What was it Saladin had said, seconds before the bullets struck – ‘we cut off his balls’ – ‘took your revenge’ – ‘ask the nun’.

  ‘Like what they did to the thief. The one who …’

  ‘The one who went too far. Had his wicked way with you, did he? Well, I’m sorry – it wasn’t in his instructions – but then you are a pretty little thing, aren’t you? And it was his last fling, before he became one of us for real.’

  ‘One of … It was you. Who stole.. You who …’ Nazreem could scarcely control the violence of her emotion.

  ‘Of course, it was, what did you expect, that we’d let you – them – take the Holy Mother and make her a sterile museum piece! Or worse, give her to the cursed Christians to be their bitch Mary, the symbol of two thousand years of repression?! The thief was working for us, but he was a man, wasn’t he? All he could think of was the money we promised, and then letting his cock out to play. He told that pious fool Saladin everything. Why do you
think they sent me such a clear message as his cock and balls in a plastic bag?’

  ‘That’ll do. Put it down, sister. Or should I say, sir. Believe me, it makes no difference to me. I follow an equal opportunities rule.’

  Marcus jerked to attention, not least because the voice from the doorway was uncannily familiar. Galina thought so too, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She wheeled and fired, the shot narrowly missing the figure that flattened itself against the wall, then dropped to the floor. Galina screamed, flung herself forward, then fell prone, spreadeagled and motionless, a trickle of dark blood dripping from a hole behind her ear.

  In a flash, the figure in the doorway was crouched over her, and turned over the limp body to reveal a neat, round entry hole below the right eye.

  ‘I guess that pays for Joe,’ he said, and turned towards where Marcus and Nazreem crouched in the corner, the bandage on his ear clearly visible.

  ‘Freddie!’

  ‘Si señor.’

  ‘But you’re …’

  ‘Take it easy, Dr Frey.’ The accent was suddenly impeccably English. ‘I’m sorry about the treatment in Madrid, but it went with the territory.’

  ‘I don’t get it. You’re …’

  ‘Friendly. I guess you could say I’m on the side of the angels. Well, most of the time anyhow.’

  ‘You … you …’ Marcus was speechless.

  ‘We’re not completely the Americans’ poodles that people sometimes think we are. For a couple of years now there have been people over here who’ve worried about the influence of the extreme Christian fundamentalists on the neocons in the last US administration.’

  ‘You mean you’re …’

  ‘A spook? Yes, if you like. But it’s not all glamour, as you can see.’ He indicated his mutilated ear.

  ‘But how did you …’

  ‘Come out here? The boys across the river. “Five”. Never mind. You don’t need to know. I was told you were coming out today to retrieve the little lady there.’ He pointed to the stone figure. ‘I wanted to take a look, considering I’d suffered in her service, as it were. Also I thought I’d say hello. And goodbye. Lucky I did. Saw the guy in reception with a bullet in his brain, and thought I maybe ought to watch out. Can’t say I’m sorry. She had it coming. I’d sort of got attached to old José, after spending two months working alongside him on a stinking cattle ranch on the Rio Grande. Gave me a real empathy for the Mexicanos.’

  ‘What about … her?’ Marcus gestured towards the prone body on the floor.

  Freddie – Alfredo – whatever his name was, and it certainly wasn’t either of those, was already pulling a phone from his pocket and tapping in a number.

  ‘Don’t you worry. I’m calling in the cleaning ladies. They should be here within the hour. If I were you, I’d make yourselves scarce. Easier that way.’

  Together, Marcus and Nazreem nodded. She picked up the stone figure and began to put it back in her bag.

  ‘Here, let me take a quick look,’ the man with the phone to his ear said. She held it out to him. He examined it for a few seconds, then shook his head and shrugged.

  ‘Mind how you go,’ he said. ‘Have a nice life.’

  ‘We will,’ she said, and slung the rucksack on her back to follow Marcus towards the open door and the rainy London skies beyond.

  Epilogue

  It was still raining two days later. A grey, slanting persistent rain that was more than a drizzle but not quite a downpour, a dull, depressing rain that drenched the streets and showed up the English summer for a lie. Marcus and Nazreem stood huddled under a cheap umbrella on the corner of Poultry and St Stephen Walbrook, streets whose very names reached back into the vanished mediaeval cityscape, surveying dismally the weathered Portland stone, grey concrete and improbable postmodernist pink marble. Taxis swished past, washing the kerbs with sprays of dirty water from their wheels. The rucksack on Nazreem’s back – even now she refused to let Marcus carry it – was suddenly unaccountably heavy.

  ‘Maybe he won’t come,’ she said and wondered if it was more in hope than expectation. And yet, deep down, she was weary of her burden.

  It had been a difficult decision at first, but then as soon as it was made, suddenly not so difficult after all. The ‘black Madonna’ had gone. Stolen and never recovered. The world had forgotten about it. And in the end that was for the best. There was no way she could now consider unleashing anew the storm of controversy that she knew would surround its rediscovery. To ignite a new bonfire amid the already smouldering ‘conflict of civilisations’ between Christian and Muslim, to turn a spotlight on an ancient artefact that was an affront to the two main faiths on the planet. No. Better by far to entrust it to one who promised, and for some reason she believed him, to treasure it for what it was – part of mankind’s history – and keep it safe until the day, should it ever come, when the world had grown up. It would, to be sure, mean that she had relinquished her hopes of overnight archaeological celebrity, to Gaza’s claim to fame. But she would have other opportunities. And Gaza had trouble enough as it was. Besides, just right now she was not sure when – or if – she was going back.

  Marcus clutched her hand. ‘He’ll come,’ he said, and realised as he said it he was not sure if it sounded like a promise or a threat.

  It was an unprepossessing site for a meeting: a bleak spot in the sterile jungle of the City of London’s financial district. Yet the old abbot had been quite specific. But it was hard to imagine anything of eternal value in this warren of unlovely architecture where the only god was greed. The focal point, No 1 Poultry, was a great pink marble shop-and-offices complex that Marcus could vaguely remember Prince Charles or someone similar calling a ‘coconut ice steamship’. Opposite it was a slab of a 1950s office block, a soulless monolith in the process of being demolished. The entrance to an underground garage yawned like a giant maw before it, and there were construction hoardings next to what looked like somebody’s idea of a rock garden in which the plants had all died, behind a rusty railing.

  A taxi stopped near the entrance to the shopping arcade at No 1 Poultry and Marcus craned his neck to see if the figure emerging was familiar but rather than a grey-haired elderly ecclesiastic it was two long-haired blonde women in pinstripe trouser suits who emerged, both talking separately into mobile phones. Marcus glanced at his watch. Already the man was fifteen minutes late, but that was nothing in Spanish terms and given the notorious unreliability of London’s transport still nowhere near time to declare a ‘no-show’. Out of idle curiosity he pulled up the collar of his jacket and strolled over to the bus stop. He thought it was unlikely that the abbot would arrive by bus, but you never knew.

  The array of route numbers – 11, 26, 56, N76, N21 – meant nothing to him. A twenty-four-hour service theoretically operated via here to Foot’s Cray wherever that was. He imagined bleary-eyed late-night revellers heading for home somewhere in the suburban fastnesses of Kent peering out into the dark wondering why on earth their bus was stopping at … whatever this stop was called. And then he saw it. The reason they were here. Four little words in black on white, the name of the bus stop written above the route numbers: ‘The Temple of Mithras’.

  He turned to where Nazreem was still standing, looking increasingly miserable with her backpack and the dripping umbrella, and called her over. He almost didn’t notice the little figure in a dark raincoat and Homburg hat scuttling across the road towards them. And then he was there, beside them, leaning over the little railing to look at the fragmentary ruins. Marcus leant beside him and examined the concrete-set rubble that he had at first taken for a neglected rock garden.

  ‘That’s why we’re here?’

  The old man nodded.

  ‘The cult of Mithras went hand in hand with worship of Kybele. It was a soldier’s religion and there was a tradition of bull sacrifice, but it did not only reach as far as Spain. Here you have the proof, at least what little they have left of it. The early Christians stole Mithras
– just as they stole Kybele – and buried all memory of his cult. In fact they did their best to confuse it with devil worship, the legend of the Antichrist.’

  ‘What do you mean? In what way?’

  ‘In almost every way. Mithras was born at the midwinter solstice, on or around the 25th of December – roughly the same date that ancient Britons celebrated the turn of the year at Stonehenge. He was born of a virgin mother, a miracle witnessed by shepherds on a rocky mountainside. After his slaying of a bull – ‘the horned beast’ – he died, was entombed in a cave and rose again to his disciples. A central feature of the initiation into his mysteries involved bull’s blood, as Christian communion involves the blood of Christ.’

  ‘You’re trying to say the whole Jesus story …’

  ‘… borrowed what was useful, to persuade Mithraists to come over to a new, semi-homegrown version of their religion. Mithraism had its home in Persia, beyond the Roman Empire’s borders, and therefore was no longer considered suitable. Christianity with its strict doctrines and hierarchies echoed the power structure of the empire itself. The irony was that as the emperors’ power waned, that of the bishops and their overlord, the bishop of Rome, filled the vacuum. It was a takeover of the empire from within, and it brooked no opposition.

  ‘Those who followed the old gods, the old beliefs in freedom of thought, were either exterminated, or found an accommodation. The Christians were fanatical and if they couldn’t eliminate an old belief, they adapted it. But in so doing, they provided a lifeline for some followers of the old religions who found a convenient way of turning the tables back again from within, of becoming double agents, so to speak, using the memory of saints, often some of the most fanatical Christians, to mask the worship of old familiar faces.’

  ‘A pagan conspiracy, at the heart of the Church for two thousand years?’

  ‘Tch. Hardly a conspiracy. More accommodation, and not always an easy one. The zealots of Protestantism with their blind faith and fascist Puritanism were – and are – the most dangerous. Along with their bedmates from the fanatical side of Islam.’