Tacit shovelled a last morsel of food into his mouth from oily remains on his plate and sucked his fingers greedily.
“I asked are you –”
“Who wants to know?” he growled, his eyes fixed on the half full bottle of spirit and glass alongside. He reached his greasy fingers forward and gathered up the tumbler, necking the amber liquid in a single quick gulp.
The woman paused and looked at the Inquisitor hard. She’d met a few of them in her time, Inquisitors. The experienced ones; they all looked haggard, spoiled, bruised, a symptom of their line of work. But Tacit, he looked more ruined than any she had seen before. He looked old as an oak tree and as rough as its bark. His deeds were legendary in the Catholic Church and she refused to let his appearance undermine her impression of him.
“I asked, ‘Who wants to know?’,” his broad jaw set firm.
“Sister Isabella,” she replied.
Tacit thrust the glass firmly down beside the bottle and refilled it. “You don’t look much like a Sister to me,” the Inquisitor muttered, despite his eyes having never left the table.
“You don’t look much like the man I was told about.”
Tacit paused, considering the gall of the woman’s words. Now he raised his eyes up to her. She noticed they settled on her cleavage a moment longer than she would have expected. If Tacit was merely a man she wouldn’t have expected anything less. But Inquisitors were supposed to be above the petty frailties of men.
The chair next to where Isabella stood was kicked roughly from beneath the table by one of Tacit’s heavy black boots. She drew it still further away from the table edge and seated herself, watching Tacit intently.
His eyes were back on his drink, the tumbler back in his hand. He necked the glass in two gulps and pulled a face of revulsion.
“If it tastes that bad, why drink it?” the Sister asked, her eyes hardening on him.
Tacit put the glass down, more measured this time, and sat back. He crossed his arms and peered at her disdainfully. “What do you want, Sister?” He hissed the word ‘Sister’ as if it offended him.
“You’re needed.”
“So soon after my last assignment?” he growled desolately. He saw a sense of contempt harden the Sister’s features at the Inquisitor’s apparent relucance to work and grimaced. “Don’t judge what you don’t know,” he spat. “I was serving the Lord whilst you were still sneaking kisses from the choristers behind Cathedral chapter houses.” He coughed roughly to clear his throat. “So, tell me, what does the Church want now? Another exorcism? Breaking of some protestant heads? Hopefully something to get me out of this God-forsaken city. It was bad enough before the war came to its borders.”
“It’s Father Andreas.”
“Priest of Arras Cathedral?” Tacit knew of them all – every Father, Brother, Cardinal and Saint in the whole of the Catholic world. He made it his job to do so.
“Ex-priest of Arras cathedral,” Isabella replied, her eyes not leaving Tacit’s face, waiting for any reaction from him. “Father Andreas was killed last night.”
If Tacit was shocked at the news, he gave no hint of it in his face or his manner. He reached across for the bottle and refilled his glass. He looked across at Isabella, the bottle still in his hand. “Do you want a glass?” he asked gruffly, more in an attempt to deviate her steely glare than a willingness to share his drink. Inquisitor Tacit had no problem drinking alone.
The Sister’s silence gave him his answer. He set the bottle down and drank most of the glass in a single pull. He put it down and sat back in his chair, crossing his arms once again. The chair beneath him creaked as he shifted his weight backwards. He weighed up what he had been told.
“If it’s murder, call the police,” he said, eventually.
Sister Isabella glared at him, her cold unmoving eyes fixed firmly on his. He stared back, their gazes locked in a silent but fierce battle.
After a few moments, Sister Isabella spoke. “You’re drunk. I can see it in your pupils.”
Tacit sneered and shook his head, reaching to fill his glass again. “If you think I’m drunk now, you haven’t seen anything.”
The Sister’s hand took hold of the neck of the bottle the moment Tacit’s hand was on its body.
“Hombre Lobo, Tacit,” Isabella hissed, leaning forward towards him across the table. Spoken with her rich Spanish accent, the words took on an even more apocryphal form.
Tacit ran his eyes over the mysterious red haired woman, judging and evaluating. If she was a Sister, she was like no Sister he’d ever met before. She looked more like a prostitute than a patron of divinity. He should know, he’d dealt with enough of both in his time. She wore no emblem of Christ, at least none that he could see. She overtly sexualised herself with how she dressed. She wore makeup. Early twenties. Daring young women, looking to take over the world. All looking like she did, though, they might. There was a scent of incense, perhaps even perfume, about her. He could detect it clearly through the pervading odour of stale alcohol and tobacco which hung heavy in the bar like the stench of death. But there was something else, something besides her using the rarely uttered word for one of the Catholic Church’s most damned of enemies. There was an almost tangible sense of godliness emanating out of her, almost as much as her comeliness. She was a beautiful woman, in every sense of the word.
“How many cases have you worked?” Tacit asked, his unmoving eyes firm on her face.
“A few,” she replied, tossing her hair out of her face.
Tacit spat dismissively, shaking his head.
“Enough,” Isabella answered back firmly, her eyes on his. “It’s not my first murder case, if that’s what you mean? And you’re not my first Inquisitor. I have been sent here to guide you in the course of your investigation.”
Tacit’s face creased with the suspicion of a joyless smile. He let go of the bottle the Sister was still holding firm in her grasp and sat back. “And if the dear Father is now deceased then on whose authority are you here?”
“The Vatican.”
“Not good enough.”
“Why do you need a name?”
“I always have a name with every case.”
“You know as well as I that you’ll never have a name.” Inquisitor assignments were almost always given anonymously by the Holy See, so that if an investigation led back to one within the Church itself, there could be no opportunity for retribution against the original instigator of the case.
Tacit nodded. The fact she knew the routine for issuing them convinced him she was who she claimed to be, whoever that was.
“Why do they suspect Hombre Lobo?” he asked, pursing his lips.
“Come and see the body.”
“They have a body?” Tacit asked, surprised.
Isabella picked up the bottle by the neck and poured a long stream of liquid into the glass in front of her. As she set the bottle down, Tacit reached forward to grasp the glass but Isabella was too quick for him. She gathered it up and put it to her lips. Tacit watched for any sign of revulsion or grimace to the hard liquor as she swallowed.
None came.
“It’s in a crypt,” she said, setting the glass down. “In Arras Cathedral.”
TWELVE
1890. THE VATICAN. VATICAN CITY.
Years of dedicated service made the Cardinal Bishop feel older than he was, but when he watched the young boys playing in the Vatican grounds, he felt the years lift from his shoulders. He rested his hands on his cane and leant his weight against the wall of rock beside which Father Adansoni was standing watching. The acolytes were playing across the way from them in the full sun of the Rome spring.
“He looks very happy,” the Cardinal Bishop said, nodding towards the figure of Tacit darting about the group of boys. “You must be very pleased, Javier?”
The Father worked an eyelash out of his eye and drew his fingers through his slowly greying hair. He nodded and smiled benevolently.
“The laughter of child
ren is one of the Lord’s greatest gifts,” the Cardinal continued, stamping the cane into the ground, as if to affirm his words, “and the laughter from a child once thought of as lost the most priceless gift of all.”
They perched against the stone and watched the children playing for a little time in silence until the Cardinal Bishop asked, “I hear they say he is a natural leader?”
Adansoni nodded. “People naturally gravitate to him, as if there is a power within him that you cannot see but which draws you. It is nothing that he knowingly does. It is just there, as if he is a magnet for souls, drawing you towards him. It is a gift. I have never known anything like it before with any of the acolytes.”
“And of what went before, there’s no issue, no mention?”
“He will not talk about it, Cardinal Bishop,” Adansoni cautioned.
“And the other boys, they don’t enquire or press for the truth?”
“If they do, he mentions nothing of it. He says he cannot remember the episode. Whether that is true or not, I don’t know. Nor I am intending to press the question. It is not my place, nor is it right to pick at that wound any longer. He is recovered. He is happy. He blossoms. That is all that concerns me. I am pleased.”
“You should be. He will make a good Father, like his mentor.” the Cardinal Bishop added, reaching over and squeezing Adansoni’s wrist, as he pushed himself up from the wall.
“Father? Ha!” Adansoni chuckled, standing up himself and stretching his back after too long leant against the cold stone. “I am thinking more a Cardinal!”
Both men laughed and the Cardinal asked if Adansoni was returning indoors. He said that he was.
“The world needs warm good people like Tacit,” the Cardinal continued, drawing his hood up over his head to fend off the morning chill, “to help spread the message of restraint, to be more considerate of others, to help people recognise that their behaviour influences outwards.”
Father Adansoni looked across the grounds for a final time before turning indoors into the Apostolic Library. “He is a guide many could learn from,” he said. “A mirror into which we should all look.”
THIRTEEN
06:30. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13TH, 1914. ARRAS. FRANCE.
Sandrine Prideux rose naked from the bed, making no effort to avoid waking her sleeping companion. In a single graceful sweep of her body, she vaulted from beneath the sheets and stepped with elegant strides to the shuttered bedroom window. The room hung heavy with the smell of cigarettes, alcohol and human sweat. It was only six thirty in the morning but already the day was turning hot. She threw the shutters wide, feeling the warmth of the sun upon her body, letting the light flood into the room. The figure in the bed groaned and rolled over, its head under a pillow.
Sandrine lit a cigarette and sat facing the low window ledge, her feet on the sill, her knees wide enough apart to allow the fresh air between her legs. Beneath her the French city of Arras was waking up. The street below buzzed with the sound of traffic, the crank of a cart, the swish of a horse’s reins, the occasional honk of a wealthy merchant’s car horn. Soldiers marched in neat lines, heavy packs on backs, rifles tucked tight into shoulders. British Tommies, weary heads staring down at the toe caps of their mud caked boots, puffed on roll ups and pulled uncomfortably at their heavy khaki uniforms in the early morning heat.
Across the dilapidated skyline of the city, clipped and disfigured by German shells, Sandrine could see traders begin to gather in the square. In the house opposite she saw the occupant watching her with a look of surprise and delight from his window. She waggled her knees and waved at him. Immediately, he turned away flustered, embarrassed, and pretended to busy himself in other business, snatching another brief look moments later before shutting the shutters altogether, as if the temptation was too great and it had to be hidden behind closed doors.
“Can you not shut the window and come back to bed?” came a feeble voice from behind her. “It’s too early.”
“But it’s a beautiful day!” she laughed.
“It’s not even seven!” the voice retorted.
“And it’s a beautiful day!” Sandrine reiterated brightly, peering briefly over her shoulder and then back to the street. And she felt it, the beauty of the day, not just in the weather, but within the essence of it too. A new dawn. A new beginning.
Every day she met people piling their belonging onto carts and heading west, away from the oncoming German forces. They would tell Sandrine to come with them, that a beautiful woman like her should not be left behind to the mercy of the enemy, to the ruinous destruction of war. But all her life she felt she had been running, running to the beck and call of others. She had decided she had run as far as she was going to and she would make her stand amongst the ruins of the front line. And whilst she did so, she would savour life in whatever time she had left.
She peered from the broken city skyline to the heavens, rich and blue, and then back to the street again when the bright dawn hurt her eyes. Sandrine sat back in her chair, feeling the heat from the cigarette on her fingers and the heat from the rising sun on her breasts. She closed her eyes and lounged like a lizard on a hot rock.
“Are you smoking?” the man croaked from the bed incredulously. His British officer clothes were still arranged neatly in a row along the end of the bed. Even the heat of passion and the recklessness of alcohol could not unseat the conformity of this British officer’s order.
When Sandrine had met him last night, drinking wine and laughing too loud with his raucous officer chums, she considered how handsome he must have been in his youth. He still retained a glimmer of his former features but a penchant for alcohol, rich foods and nicotine had blunted his charm.
They’d all watched her greedily, the officers, as she’d joined them at their table, devouring her body with their eyes, joining easily with her rich laughter and luxuriant manner, each taking turns to fill her glass, placing hands upon her knee and imploring her with their deep and beseeching gazes. One, a sandy haired and balding officer, his thin lips concealed by a generously coiffured moustache, salted with speckles of ginger and white like a tabby cat, had even had the audacity to touch her breast and run his hand up the inside of her thigh. She’d allowed him the briefest of touches against the soft fabric of her panties, before her hand had dropped to his and a raised eyebrow insisted he withdraw it, however reluctant he felt. He’d whimpered like a scolded child and tried the same trick a short time later, only to be rebuffed sharply and pushed drunkenly from his chair. Afterwards he’d taken to staring menacingly at her from the distance of a next door table, no longer partaking in idle flirtatious advances.
Any other night she would have spurned the slow and subtle advances of the dark haired officer who now languished in his bed behind her, rejecting his suitability as a lover and choosing one of the younger officers to satisfy her deep and carnal yearning. But there was something about the way he watched her with his slate grey eyes and a quiet confidence, which both intrigued and excited her. Whilst around her officers fell over themselves to fill her glass and chirp excitedly at her jokes, he joined the revelry at a distance in an assured and measured fashion, an enticing mix of experience and command. Her passion was charged with his smouldering reserve, her own pursuit of recklessness, the noise and banter within the bar, the temerarious urge of alcohol. Four miles east from them, the Germans had begun a short and savage barrage of the British front line, pounding them with eighteen inch mortar rounds. But here, within the dark hot confines of one of Arras’s most secret of drinking venues, passions of a different sort ran wild.
As a lone bell tower tolled one o’clock, she’d slipped an arm through his and told him to take her back to his lodging and make love to her.
They’d tumbled drunkenly onto the bed, his wet mouth on her neck, Sandrine’s hands in his hair, around his neck and back, feeling more impassioned with every passing second. He surprised her when he pulled himself from her longing embrace and undressed quickly besi
de the bed, telling her to do the same, as if the act of undressing each other in their lovemaking was somehow too awkward or slow for him to consider. She giggled as he laid out his uniform in neat lines along the end of the bed, climbing onto her knees and reaching out to him when he was naked but for his undergarments. Their mouths locked in a tight embrace, their tongues tasting alcohol and cigarettes, his hand slipping between her thighs.
He made love like the British army made war, manoeuvring himself tactically within the bed and then applying himself with a sense of ruthlessness once in position.
They talked for a little time afterwards, of inconsequential things mixed with occasional brief laughter. But soon his eyes rolled in his head and he fell asleep without warning, his pursed lips slightly ajar, snoring softly in his easy drunken sleep. Sandrine had left him and sat at the window smoking, listening to the sounds coming up from the city, the sudden bark of rare laughter, the sharp rap of footsteps, the far distant falling of shells. But for the main, Arras had been silent.
Sandrine took a long and loud draw on her cigarette and, tilting her head back, exhaled into the air above her. Her darkly curled hair fell almost to the seat of the chair on which she sat.
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