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

‘You saw? So it was not a vision entrusted to me alone. I wonder; was it seen by all Rome?’

  ‘It was not, Holy Father. The Swiss Guard below at their posts made no motion or gave indication of alarm.’

  ‘Good,’ said the Pope. ‘Then you will make no mention of it either, you hear? Swear it on your soul.’

  ‘As the Holy Father commands . . .’

  ‘And then when I enter the vaults, you are to leave me. You may wait, but you must not follow. Again, swear it, on your immortal soul.’

  He kicked off the shoes of the fisherman and slid his feet into ordinary, practical sabots and as the last of his ceremonial garb was laid aside, he wrapped himself in the faded cassock and round hat of a parish priest from poor Spoleto. ‘Haste, make haste, Niccolo. And we must not be seen. Where is your lantern? Good – lead on.’

  We scattered our feet down spiral staircases, sped through tunnels and along galleries and passageways more intricate and knotted than theology itself. Down, down, always down, whichever turning to left or right the humble servant Niccolo Parvatti chose. Down, down, always down, through the hidden interstices between secret panels, across rooms that appeared nowhere on the floor plans, past guard rooms unaware of the secrets they guarded and through treasuries kept from venal archbishops by mendicant friars of exemplary poverty. Down, down, always down, our lanterns throwing the spinning shadows of our own souls, like the spokes of the wheel of fortune or a canasta of cards across the yellow curtain walls. Down past the last traces of Imperials, Guelphs, Ghibellines, Normans, Franks, Goths, Huns, Alans, down below the dares of Niccolo’s childhood, down past the lower strata of the Emperors of the glory of Rome, down below Etrusca, down to the last vault, down to the last and deepest door.

  ‘Good man, Niccolo Parvatti, you will be blessed for this,’ said Pio Nono, whose name had shrunk with the depth and plain clothing. ‘Now wait here, good servant, and sleep awhile for I shall be gone for the whole of the night.’

  ‘Shall I not attend?’

  ‘You shall not,’ commanded Pio Nono. He checked his dark lantern, put his hand to the planks of the wooden postern gate and pushed. ‘I bid you wait.’

  Niccolo Parvatti was a good and humble servant, and like a good and humble servant he knew when to disregard his master’s commands because however great and good, or holy, the humble servant often knows the man better than the man knows himself. He waited for a count of thirty, extinguished the lantern, and then slipped into the ink-well blackness of the cave.

  *

  The cavern was a darkness and the darkness was a cavern as the humble servant Niccolo Parvatti followed along in the wake of Pio Nono’s faint glim, watching, guarding him until he stopped dead. Then Niccolo found a place to hide behind a barrel, one of many barrels, large and small that were stacked in rows around the cold stone walls. There, his heart beating with terror, he heard the sound of flesh, flaccid, dead, dragging itself through the silica of the sandy floor. There he glimpsed the foul worm, whose head was a toad and whose dreadful tongue struck among a bluebottle tornado, lapping them up like the corpses of men and crunching them with a sound like the cracking of rib cages. It had come to battle.

  He would have hidden his eyes away at that moment had not a flash of sabre tooth caught in the sweep of Pio Nono’s pale lantern and revealed the striped beast of the night in all its terrifying, feline savagery. With a roar like a falling battlement it leaped for its prey, the worm, and landed on its scaled back, claws raking great scars that matched its own terrible stripes, its teeth sinking into the foul, nacreous bag of the noxious carcass. The worm writhed in its agony, and became basilisk, Gorgon, Hydra by turns, ripping at the fur of the cat, tearing out its massive teeth and flinging it by its yelping tail across the screaming floor of the cave. The tiger in turning became the night-jaguar, the leopard-warrior, and its hiss was like the flight of the arrow storm scything down piked battalions.

  ‘Halt! Halt! I command it!’ cried Pio Nono. He took the candle from his dark lantern and went forward, holding it aloft like a beacon. ‘I command you stay this riot!’

  The beasts recoiled, squirming and coiling and Pio Nono took centre stage. There, on a sole barrel upturned for a table, stood a great cream altar candle, decorated with many symbols traced out in silver, gold and vermillion, and Pio Nono put his own small flame to it so that he might claim his allotted time for parley with Angels. ‘Fiat lux,’ he said, and the flame leaped to the wick.

  For a moment there was only the tiniest glimmer of light and then the candle exploded in a tower of sparking flame that opened the roof of the cavern to the sky and let in the whole of day and night at once, so that the stars were as visible as the sun and the moon as bright as day. From horizon to horizon, the world was unveiled and the full battlefield of the creation of God was laid out at our feet. Green verges by quiet waters; dark tempests beating upon the cliffs of despair; full flights of egrets soaring over battle-fleets of swans while the pike waited in ambush; golden cornfields and fresh-ploughed tillage; distant deserts burning the earth to scalded red. Here was Heaven and Hell come down to Earth, the famine by the feast. Here was the point of dangerous truce, where time was measured by a fizzing candle atop a barrel, which only now did your humble servant recognise as a barrel containing finest-grain, corned, red-arrow gunpowder.

  The ravening beasts had gone, disappeared in a flash of lighted darkness and in their place stood a single Fusilier, a young Ensign, battle-hardened blond innocence in pipe-clayed cross belts, a silver tunic, seven stars about his breast, polished boots and musket to his right.

  ‘Who are you and whence came you?’ demanded Pio Nono.

  ‘This knowledge is occult to you,’ replied the boy soldier in a voice of high fifes and flutes. ‘But you may call me Melchior.’

  ‘Melchior?’ queried Pio Nono. ‘That Melchior who followed the star to Bethlehem?’

  ‘No. Now state your business, for I am away from my duty on the Line.’

  ‘I was promised two Angels.’ Pio Nono looked about the marvellous landscape and up to the magnificent skies.

  ‘My enemy will be here soon. What I hear, he hears. Now speak.’

  ‘How old are you, boy?’ he said with the same soft sympathy he had shown for the wretched children of Spoleto. ‘How come you to this war?’

  ‘How old am I? I have no age. I am immortal and was called into being before time itself was born. Now state your business. I do not relish this task, for I am a warrior not a diplomat.’

  Pio Nono took in the boy’s youthful visage and then, knotting his hands behind his cassock, he began to pace back and forth, slowly, shooting querulous glances from under the black brim of his hat. As he turned on his heel at the end of each march he studied his question and how best to present it, rubbing three fingers against the centre of his forehead as though he was massaging an ache away.

  ‘I have started a revolution,’ he said, opting for simplicity. ‘And it has run out of control into paths I never envisaged. Here at the pivot of my century I stand, not knowing whether to condemn it and accept the bloodshed that will result from its suppression, or accept that the bloodshed already can only be sanctified by a further, deeper revolt, that carries the logic of revolution through to the establishment of an earthly paradise.’

  ‘What year is this?’ asked the Angel Melchior.

  ‘1848.’

  ‘And do you not have the example of 1789 before you?’ He removed his shako, pulled a firkin towards him, upturned it and sat as heavily as such a being of light could. ‘Mob rule, Terror, Dictatorship and twenty years of War. What did you expect?’

  ‘That history would not repeat itself; that we might learn from our mistakes and get it right this time.’

  ‘And you did this by opening your prisons, freeing bitter men and calling them into a Consulta where they might forge new bonds and plot new plots?’

  ‘They were men of ideals,’ offered Pio Nono after a few minutes’ introspection, which the
boy occupied with cleaning his musket. ‘Thoughtful men. Men with a better vision of the future than we – their rulers – allowed for.’

  ‘The Lord save us from dreamers,’ said the boy, rubbing hard at a spot of rust. ‘Give me the hard fact of a bayonet before the unreliable squib of damp powder any day.’

  ‘You do not believe that man can be perfected?’ Pio Nono paused in his transit and held out an accusatory finger.

  ‘Angels are not perfect,’ scoffed the boy. ‘What chance have men? This very moment a revolutionist in Germany is writing a blueprint for a perfect world. His name is Marx and that blueprint will swill so much red blood around this planet that men will wonder how the gentle authorities did not take the opportunity to blind him, break his fingers around his pen and tear out his tongue. Hark! My enemy advances.’

  The sound of hooves fast approaching through a forest drummed through the landscape until a blue lancer thundered down before them, the smell of good earth, clean storm and horseflesh about him. He dismounted with a growl.

  ‘What siege come you from?’ demanded Melchior rising to his feet, detaching his bayonet from its frog.

  ‘Orion,’ answered the Lancer, rubbing the grey neck of his horse with a white gauntlet.

  ‘You will not take it. I know who commands there and he is war itself. Your engines will melt before his blast.’

  ‘We shall see. Rest and refresh yourself while you can.’ The lean-waisted Lancer removed the flat-topped schapska cap, hung it on the pommel of his saddle and, directing his comments over his shoulder, loosened off the girth. ‘You are Pope Pius, I see. My name is Cain.’

  ‘Any significance to that name?’

  ‘No. Continue your discourse – though Melchior is trying to frighten you, I fear. The future is not fixed.’

  ‘Who said it was?’ challenged the boy, flipping his bayonet down into the grass as though it were a pocket knife. ‘Yet all revolutions end up being run by those who think a little more killing, a few more broken heads, a few more dissenters jailed will guarantee perfection.’

  ‘So the idle aristocracy and the wealthy bourgeois may gorge themselves, safe in the knowledge that they may not be shaken out of their decadence by the righteous, just anger of a starving people?’ The blue Lancer tightened a loose buckle, brushed at a fetlock and then stood back. ‘I fear we need more dreamers, not less. Go ahead – drink.’

  Pio Nono listened intently to these opening shots, weighing the words this way and that, taking his time. ‘This wrangling does not help my dilemma,’ he said. ‘I need to see the consequences of my choices. I need to see the future.’

  ‘It’s a little late for that,’ said the Ensign, drawing out his canteen. ‘If you have already ignored the past.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Cain. ‘Let me show you the hopeful future.’

  He took off a gauntlet and waved it nonchalantly across the panorama, instantly transforming the landscape in a blur of blue sapphire light, whipping us up until we were flying high, higher than the highest mountain in Italy, as though we had ascended in an air balloon. Your humble servant, Niccolo Parvatti, could barely contain himself from gasping at another great miracle, for before us lay the whole of Italy, sparkling in the sun, snowy mountain ranges above the grey-green of olive orchards, Monte Cassino a little plot of land and the Holy City no more than a village seen from a high hill; and all under that same sapphire light that makes this land the only place fit for a renaissance or indeed, though he should not whisper it, a Risorgimento.

  ‘You are to tempt me like Christ in the desert?’ asked Pio Nono, when he too had got his breath back. ‘You will offer the whole world in return for my soul?’

  ‘Believe me, I have no interest in your soul,’ replied Cain, taking up an easy stance, as he pointed out salient features of the future in the same way he would brief his officers for an attack. ‘Note well: Milano, Genoa, Venezia, Firenze, Siena, Napoli, Palermo all under the flag of Italy. Italia fara da se! Italy has made herself. See how the law tempts down the Giordano banditti out of the mountains of the south to embrace the plough and legitimate commerce? See the marshes drained by the engineers of Piedmont! Look how the church opens schools to bring the light of learning, technical skills and respect for liberty to both high and low; how she blasts away the barriers of privilege and opens the road to each career, for each man to take as far as his virtues, his effort, his strength and fortitude will take him. No more the lounging mercenary guarding the despot in his crumbling palace but instead a citizen army, defending the liberties of all with the breasts of free men.’

  He lifted his eyes a little higher and drew our attention to the world beyond the Alps.

  ‘Germany too, free, united, prosperous, holding out her hands to embrace the brotherhood of Free Hungary, Free Poland, Free Bohemia; even restless France declares herself content while the tyrant Tsar gnaws on his own bones in his frozen, bleak palace. England, home of industry and commerce, originator of modern liberalism, modern nationalism, modern parliamentary government, sends out her best to trade, to instruct us in the finer points of law, steam, manufacture; and all joined together by the gossamer bonds of liberty. Ready to march, with good intentions . . .’

  ‘All the way to Hell,’ broke in Ensign Melchior. ‘Piffle! What nonsense is this? Bid them look further, Cain, I dare you. Bid them look to 1914 for the results of your precious brotherhood of nations.’

  ‘1914?’ said Pio Nono.

  ‘Or 1917, to see how your dreamers deal in Russia,’ said Melchior. He had taken his canteen and was pouring a sweet-scented liquor into a silver cup. ‘Men of different races and languages and cultures cannot live together? I think they can. Anyway, how will you separate the human kaleidoscope of Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia or the Balkans? Dig English Channels and bid one live this side and another that? And where will you put the Jews? Ha! The Devil is always in the detail.’

  With that, Melchior drank and we were back in the cavern, with only the half-burned candle on a gunpowder barrel to wonder at. He toasted Pio Nono and the fragrance of a summer’s day filled the atmosphere. ‘Let me tell you of what my German scholar’s dreams will bring and then let Cain speak for revolution once more, if the plate on his silver tongue has not rusted by then.’

  ‘Damn your details, Melchior,’ barked Cain, jamming his fist back into his gauntlet. ‘What would life be without the chance to experience the rush of hope, to strive for the dream, to measure yourself against the odds of unkind fate?’

  ‘You mean, to wave a ragged banner on a broken barricade built from the bricks of your house and then die like a poet while your children starve and your wife is turned out into the street? Do not come the Romantic with me. Life is as it is for a reason and Pio Nono here must use his reasonable faculties to steer his difficult course. Breasts of free men indeed! It is the armour of trained, drilled soldiery that win battles, not the enthusiasm of fools drunk on the oratory of charlatans.’

  ‘Tell me of your scholar, Melchior,’ said Pio Nono, his hands once more behind his back, twitching in agitated concentration. ‘This candle burns fast. Is he a revolutionary?’

  ‘He is. And he will herald revolutions that make 1848 look like comic opera.’ Ensign Melchior picked his bayonet out of the sandy floor and cut a window-sized hole in the rock. Pio Nono peered through into a book-lined study where a dark-skinned, curly-haired man sat at a plain desk. He was weeping over a pen. ‘His child is dead. Three more will die in poverty while he writes of an earthly paradise to come.’

  ‘He is one of the blessed poor. I honour him for it and will pray for him,’ said Pio Nono, his hand to mouth, distraught at the figure of grief before him.

  ‘Save your breath,’ answered Melchior. ‘He comes from wealth but has squandered it, was educated in the law but chose philosophy and journalism. Though he has the skill to provide a good living, it is his friends who labour to keep him; but they are disowned by their own wealthy parents because of their opinions and so betwe
en them they squabble over crumbs and their children starve in the midst of plenty.’

  ‘His philosophy?’

  ‘Political economy,’ replied Melchior. ‘It is something of a mystery to Angels . . .’

  ‘Not just Angels . . .’

  ‘. . . for we create by desire. There is no commissariat department in our armies and all things are ready provided. But Adam was cursed by God for tasting the forbidden fruit and so must labour for his daily bread.’ He gave a cynical laugh. ‘So much for Free Will, eh? Well, this Marx claims to have mastered its mysteries.’

  Pio Nono went over to the window, stepped through the rock as though it were mist and looked over the philosopher’s shoulder to read what he was writing.

  ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’ Pio Nono looked up and thought for a moment. ‘Is it?’ he said to himself. ‘What? All of it?’

  ‘He paints with a broad brush stroke,’ said Cain, impatiently. ‘Make your point, Melchior.’

  ‘As you wish. Pull your horse-blanket around you, Cain, for even you will feel the keenness of this wind.’

  Your humble servant was transported once again, to a dark, dark place where the black sky was ablaze with green fire and the cold knife of a winter wind groaned across a frozen waste, stripping the flesh from my bones more surely than the sharp beak of the gibbet crow. As the rime of driven frost scratched, then snapped my eyelashes, so the bare stone axe of bleak midwinter chipped off the tips of my ears and bruised my fingers to blackened agony, all in an instant, so that I was moved to a sob of despair which I feared would entail my discovery. I need not have feared, for upon escaping it was lost instantly in the gruelling moans of muffled miners in thin quilted jackets, their sweat frozen on waxen faces as they hammered at the concrete earth, sheltered only by a windbreak of bodies stacked like cordwood.

  ‘What place is this blasted heath?’ cried Pio Nono, grabbing for his hat in a frenzy of flapping, cracking cassock. ‘Are we in Hell?’

  ‘It is the Kolyma Slave Labour camp and the year is 1968,’ answered Cain, switching off the wind and freezing everything to a picture, so that it was possible to see the sleet paused in mid-air and the chips of earth from the hammers suspended amid their sparks. ‘And Melchior overstates his case. This nightmare flowed from Marx’s philosophy, true, but it was a mistake in a noble experiment, and the ideals of a brotherhood of mankind should not be lost in the inevitability of human error.’