Tales from the Vatican Vaults: 28 extraordinary stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Garry Kilworth, Mary Gentle, KJ Parker, Storm Constantine and many more

by David V. Barrett

  After what felt like half an hour’s walk along corridors and up and down flights of stairs, they came to a big wooden door, which the Prince opened with a key from the pouch on his belt. Philip smelled burning and then he was inside.

  For a prince’s rooms, these were very simple, perhaps the true reflection of Schloss Altenberg’s present situation rather than the face the Prince wished to present to the world. The furniture had once been rich, but was now worn, the hangings on the wall faded. A tarnished pewter bowl on a side table held several wizened apples and an orange as hard as a cannonball. This was what the ‘Miracle’ would rescue.

  Sitting in a chair in the centre of the room was what seemed for all the world like an eight-year-old child wearing full silver armour. The figure was sitting motionless, hands folded in its lap. It was making a noise like the wheezing of a bellows, and faint wisps of smoke or steam emerged from orifices down its sides. It had the prognathous jaw and heavy brows of a baboon.

  ‘Here is our Miracle,’ the Prince declared.

  Philip looked at the Prince, then at the Friar, then at the figure in the chair. These men, he reasoned, were surely insane. He said, ‘What does it do?’

  ‘It foretells the future,’ said Friar Pascal.

  Philip took a few steps towards the chair, and both the Friar and the Prince stepped forward with him. As he drew closer, he could see that the polished surface of the figure was intricately etched or incised to resemble fur, its hands and feet wrought to resemble articulated claws. It was the work of a master craftsman, but it seemed unlikely to be a Miracle.

  ‘Ask it a question,’ the Prince urged.

  Philip glanced at him, then at the metal baboon. Was this really sufficient for the Prince to order him killed? Feeling a little foolish, he said loudly, ‘Will I ever marry?’

  For a moment there was no response. Then from within the body of the monkey came a whirring sound, and its head suddenly began to look left and right until it seemed to be looking directly at Philip with tiny bejewelled eyes. Its jaw moved, and in a low, rasping voice, it said, ‘Yes.’

  Philip turned to Friar Pascal and the Prince. ‘This is a mechanism. It is also wrong. I am a priest.’

  The baboon’s mouth opened again. ‘You are in the Church, but not of it,’ it said. ‘You have taken no oath of celibacy.’

  Frowning, Philip stepped around to the rear of the chair. There was a hatch or panel on the monkey’s back. Unlatching it, he found himself looking at clockwork of the finest workmanship, rows of cogs packed almost solidly together and interlaced with wires and cables. Pipes wound and unwound through the device, carrying steam from a small coal-fired boiler. It was the most beautiful thing Philip had ever seen, and it was utterly bewildering.

  ‘This is not a Miracle,’ Philip said. ‘It is an exquisite piece, but it is a toy, an automaton. I have no doubt that scholars would travel from far and wide to view it, but a Miracle?’ He shook his head. ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves, trying to pass this thing off as a Miracle just to enrich yourselves. A good thing Father Albrecht alerted us to this trick.’

  ‘The spirit of the Lord has entered into it,’ Friar Pascal said tightly. ‘It learns, Father Philip, and in learning knows itself.’

  Philip looked at the baboon. ‘What do you say? Has the spirit of the Lord entered into you?’

  For a long time there was no response. Then the monkey said, ‘No. But I do learn.’ And with a whirring and a clanking the silver figure stood slowly from its chair, lowered itself on all fours, and looked up at Philip, turning its head this way and that. ‘And I do know myself.’

  ‘It was made by a master craftsman in a village some days’ ride from here,’ the Prince said. ‘The man is now dead, and we do not know how he made this thing. His apprentice delivered it to me.’

  Philip took a step away from the automaton. He said, ‘You say you know yourself. Do you know God?’

  ‘I know of God,’ the monkey replied. ‘I know there is no God. The Universe is only chaos; if you were to look closely enough at the fabric of Creation you would say that it does not exist at all in any way that you can understand.’

  Philip shook his head. ‘No,’ he told the two men. ‘No, this is not a Miracle. It is a device, a thing built by the hand of Man for the purpose of speaking gibberish and heresy.’

  ‘The hand of the Lord has revealed great wonders to it,’ said Pascal. ‘It says that at the heart of everything, the very smallest part of the world, there resides a holy power. It says that this power can be freed from certain minerals. Imagine if Rome had that power.’

  ‘It sounds,’ Philip said, ‘like witchcraft.’

  ‘Not witchcraft,’ the monkey said. ‘Science.’

  ‘What do you know of God, anyway?’ the Prince sneered at Philip. ‘I’ve heard stories of your Order. Sceptics, unbelievers, heretics, all of you, doing the bidding of Rome. Travelling the world, stealing secrets to squirrel away in the Vatican.’

  ‘We are men of faith,’ Philip answered. ‘What few of us remain. And we protect the world from the likes of you.’

  ‘A holy order of cynics,’ Pascal spat. ‘God’s own army of atheists.’

  ‘I am a mere apprentice in cynicism beside you, Friar,’ Philip told him.

  The monkey sat back on its haunches and looked at the men. It said, ‘They are here.’

  The Prince looked at it. ‘Who? Who is here?’

  As if in answer, there drifted up from the courtyard below the sound of horses and shouting. The Prince went to the window and looked out.

  ‘Deus ex machina,’ the baboon said. It looked at Philip. ‘Nice trick.’

  ‘I find it prudent to have them follow a day or so behind me,’ Philip said. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘How dare you do this?’ Face working, the Prince turned from the view of the courtyard, where a detachment of Papal Guards was efficiently taking over his home. ‘How dare you?’

  Philip rubbed his face. ‘I had hoped this would not be necessary,’ he said. ‘But after last night you leave me no choice.’

  Friar Pascal seemed suddenly to shrink within his habit. He crossed to a chair and sat heavily.

  ‘You will accompany me and my men to Rome,’ Philip told them. ‘You have my word that no harm will come to you.’

  ‘To hell with your word!’ the Prince cried, and stormed out of the room. There was a brief commotion in the corridor outside, then a tall soldier entered the room.

  ‘Good morning, Captain,’ said Philip.

  The Captain’s gaze took in Friar Pascal and the silver monkey. He expressed no surprise at all. Rouen had exhausted his capacity for surprise. ‘All well, Father?’ he asked.

  ‘All well, thank you, Captain,’ Philip assured him. ‘Would you please escort Friar Pascal and the Prince to the coach? If they resist, put them in irons. And have the men build a box large enough to contain this.’ He waved at the baboon.

  ‘Very well, Father.’ Two more soldiers entered the room, but Pascal gave no resistance as they helped him to his feet, and he said nothing as he was led out.

  When they were alone again, the monkey said, ‘The time is coming when even the Church will not be able to deny the things I can see.’

  ‘That time is not yet,’ said Philip.

  ‘It can’t be stopped. You will take me to Rome and they will douse my fire and put me in a box and hide me away, but it can’t be stopped.’

  ‘If you can see the future, you must have known this would happen,’ Philip said.

  ‘The future is what it is,’ the baboon told him. ‘It is composed of our choices and the choices of others and the vagaries of the weather and the whims of Popes and common men. There is nothing anyone can do to change it.’ It tipped forward until it was on all fours again, and clanked over to Philip’s side. ‘But I will tell you this, Father. A man is coming. A man who will break open your Church like an egg. He will shake it to its foundations and open its deepest secrets for all to see. He w
ill tell the world about the work done by your Order, suppressing the truth, hiding wonders from plain sight. The Church of Rome will never be the same again. And I for one applaud his coming.’

  Philip looked out of the window. Down in the courtyard, the Prince was being helped none too gently into a carriage, observed by his former servants. ‘He must have asked you what his future held,’ Philip said.

  ‘Yes, he did,’ replied the baboon, walking towards the door. ‘But I lied.’

  Ω

  In a damp storeroom some distance away from the shelf where Philip’s report was found in the Vaults, a wooden crate was discovered. Its faded label was cross-referenced to this report. Unfortunately 300 years had wreaked their toll on its contents. The automaton had clearly been dismantled on its arrival at the Vatican. Parts of the silvery shell of its body were still recognisable, including most notably its face which did, indeed, resemble that of a baboon. But its inner workings had rusted and rotted away; something that might have been its miniature boiler was in four or five pieces, those of its wires and cables which had not already disintegrated fell to dust on being touched, and its hundreds of tiny cog wheels had fused into a mass in the bottom of the crate.

  Philip’s mysterious Order, ‘a holy order of cynics’, has proved equally difficult to identify. There are occasional brief references in other reports found in the Vaults, but with no more information than we find here. According to Philip his Order was ‘old, and very nearly extinct’. As a general rule, the longer an organisation, however secretive, has been in existence, the more information can be found on it. In this case the only other references are from a few other accounts from the seventeenth century. There are no official records of its existence among the many orders, extant and defunct, of the Church. Unless further evidence comes to light we conclude that its antiquity was, as with many esoteric orders, merely part of its own foundation myth. It may have been an experiment set up by a particularly insightful pope, or by the Vatican Library itself, but we suspect it did not last for long.

  1771

  Some of the accounts discovered in the Vaults are straightforward; others, such as this one, are more puzzling.

  Why, in the eighteenth century, did the Church become interested in, even troubled by, the activities and the possible beliefs of shepherds and goatherds?

  The Watchers

  Garry Kilworth

  I am Bishop Spinoza and I have been charged with the duty of investigating the shepherds and their involvement in the machinations of the Church. (I use the word ‘shepherds’ as a general term to include goatherds and cowherds.) How this investigation is to be achieved I have not yet fathomed. There are thousands of them still, a network throughout the globe, and we have been concerned at their presence for several centuries now: almost since the birth of our Lord. They recognise no borders and wander from one country to another with impunity, crossing by means of narrow mountain tracks or over deserts. They are as raceless as their trade and know all the lonely isolated paths. They are as phantoms in the wilderness, watching, watching, watching.

  Theirs is a silent profession: even when they pass you by with their herds of sheep or goats you get no vocal greeting. Perhaps an expressionless nod, or glance of the eyes, but rarely a sound leaves their lips. They stare into the middle distance, enigmatic figures drifting by among a clattering herd of copper-belled animals. Mostly you see them from far off, standing lean and tall on a crag, or down in the gut of a valley, watchful, a staff in one hand. We know so very little about them, as a group or as individuals. Who among even the congregations that attend our services has a shepherd for a close friend?

  Yet this faceless breed of men were represented at the Birth. Today’s shepherds spring from that small group who followed the same star as the three magi. We know the names of the latter of course, by tradition: Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar. Whether they were kings, astrologers, Persian priests or even wizards is unknown, but we know where they went after the Birth and we know their number. Of the shepherds we know nothing. Who they were and how many is unrecorded. They remain mysterious, misty creatures who melted into the anywhere and everywhere once they had witnessed the birth of the Messiah.

  Though few in numbers they remain ubiquitous and see everything. They have done for centuries. It is the belief of my superiors that the shepherds are waiting, but no one knows why or for what. Secret documents, now released, have been piling up in the Vatican Archives since the fourth century when the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine I, ordered the initial investigation into the involvement of the shepherds in the new religion. Various Bishops of Rome have invited or ordered representatives of the ‘shepherds’ to attend important meetings at crucial turning points of the religion, but no one knew which of the shepherds should be asked to present themselves, they having no leaders or hierarchy of any kind.

  Now I sit in my office, the windows wide open because of the heat of the summer day, with piles of paper in every corner of the room. Where do I start? I have read much of what surrounds me, yet I’m no more knowledgeable than when I first took on the task. Is it simply paranoia that is fuelling this investigation? I thought so at first, but the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced my superiors are right to be concerned, even alarmed. How can such an important group of individuals, a set of men equal to kings in the eyes of the Lord, simply have no future part in the formation and growth of a creed and belief that represents, nay even controls, millions of people? Kings have had much say in the movements of Church policy and its breakaway tributaries for over 1700 years. Surely then, the shepherds have a role to play too? Are they the ‘secret police’ who watch and evaluate the changes taking place? Or perhaps they are waiting for that moment to swoop and take our power from us?

  As I sit and ponder on this huge puzzle, the answer to which must – must – be found sooner, rather than too late, there is a knock on my door.

  ‘Bishop?’ says my assistant, ‘I have one here.’

  I sweep the desk clear of papers, useless pieces of nothing but surmises, and say, ‘Send him in.’

  A slightly confused-looking man, raw of skin, narrow of frame, upright of posture, is ushered into my office. He still has his staff in his hand, an ancient-looking rod of some now indefinable wood. I indicate a chair but he does not even look at it. He stands before me in dusty clothes that might have come off a scarecrow. Perhaps they did? There is no malice or anger in his face. He simply stares at me, expressionless, causing me discomfort for a moment. I fiddle with a paperweight that has no duty now that the desk is clear of litter.

  ‘Ah, where are you from, señor?’

  ‘Mich fahima,’ comes the flat reply.

  Arabic. Good. I am fluent in the language.

  ‘Where were you born?’ I ask again, in his tongue.

  ‘Jerusalem.’

  Perfect. ‘You were found on the northern shores of the Black Sea – a long way from home, eh?’

  ‘I have no home.’

  ‘You are a goatherd?’

  ‘I have a herd of goats.’

  ‘What is your religion?’

  ‘That is my business.’

  Annoying, but I continue, hoping to get a clue in the answers to further questions. ‘And your name?’

  ‘It’s been too long. I have forgotten. It is not important.’

  I peer into his face. It is lined and ravaged by a life in the open, attacked by the weather and sleepless nights guarding his stock. The wind, sun and rain have deeply scored his complexion which is now the colour of mahogany and rougher than the bark of a cedar. These agents of climate have gone so deep they may even have marked his bones, pitted and scarred them. He could be any age but not young. A man who has spent a lifetime with only goats for companions may indeed have lost his name, for it means nothing unless it is used.

  ‘How did you come here?’

  He shrugs. ‘They brought me. They promised me twenty more goats. I must get bac
k. The boy I left looking after my animals will be concerned.’

  I leaned forward. ‘Is he to be a goatherd, like you?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Do you instruct him?’

  ‘A little – what is to teach? They are goats. They eat grass and bushes. They shit where they stand. They grow to know their master and obey his commands.’

  ‘What about other things? Philosophy? Do you teach the boy about the deeper meanings of life and death? Belief? Do you concern yourself with the complex workings of religion in its various forms?’ I am aware my voice has risen and is sounding quite shrill. ‘Come now. Tell me what you think about when you are alone in the wilderness. You have all that time to consider the spirituality of your fellow men. Are we going in the right direction, or do you think we have taken a wrong path? Several wrong paths? Is there – is there a planned method for correction? A radical change coming, one perhaps which the shepherds intend to guide, even enforce? Come, come, what have you all been doing for the last two thousand years? You have to have been thinking about more than where next to take your goats. You have to have gathered wisdom.’

  He blinks. His look is impenetrable. His eyes too deep for my understanding. I can’t get past that obsidian stare.

  ‘I am far from stupid,’ he finally replies. ‘Is that what you think? I am stupid?’

  ‘No, no, I’m stating quite the opposite. Look, do you know other shepherds and goatherds? Do you gather together, talk, speak of things that other men have no time to discuss?’

  ‘I pass others of my kind. We might mention where rich ownerless grass is to be found. Water. Water too is precious. And the stars. We might speak of the stars.’

  ‘Ah! The stars. What do you say of them? Do you speak of divinity? Is there one special star?’

  He shrugs. ‘They are our maps.’

  ‘Nothing more? What about beauty?’