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

She hardly heard it, for the starting idea of there being no sin, only illness, was also filling her with anxiety, with panic.

  The need to calm down pushed her to the lab. A snake was waiting to be dissected. Do this, and down the microscope she found strangeness, a strand of life pouring chemicals out to the grass which changed as it grew, from one kind of grass to another, and again. She put a drop on a passing bee, which changed colour, and again.

  Write what you see, said the voice, just as you see it. I am showing you. Snakes are very important. They assist change, they were my tools of evolution. This is how I made the world.

  Put the papers together, pass them to Father Gregory. The Abbess might have been able to do that, except that elderly Father Basil called Sister Anna up for Confession. He sometimes did this. Erratically turning up. Turning the routine upside down by asking for Confessions in the late evening. ‘We can’t be too careful. Satan will strike me dead if I do not weed out every tiny piece of heresy.’ Given that he had been tortured in China, he was allowed to be this way.

  He liked his nuns to be docile, ignorant, looking at him with wonder at what he knew. He already hated Sister Anna, with a passion that should have been aimed at his torturers: that one cannot confess too much; far too much intelligence hidden there, what is she doing in the lab? And the library? Are these ladies aware of the lion’s den at all? She should be mortified. Mortified. What nonsense is this she has made up? Gibberish. How can anyone know what this says. It isn’t even Latin. Not that a nun should know any Latin that isn’t in the prayer book. How is it she knows this much Latin? From copying? But there isn’t a dictionary. She shouldn’t know. What’s the punishment for being able to write Latin? We have to make her unknow it.

  The voice went silent when Father Basil was around. It always had. Her own mind was still reeling with the implications of this version of the Eden story. It fitted her tiny understanding of her first, older faith. What on earth would Father Basil say, if he knew she not only understood Hebrew, but knew a softer regional variation, in which she had been lulled to sleep. Lullay, my tiny little child.

  He caught her red-handed. He snatched the documents from her. Once read, he denounced her. He denounced her as a heretic, and a Jew, and a woman who was fluent in languages that he did not know, and as a scientist. His hatred boiled over. He demanded that she should be excommunicated, and thrown to the wolves. The Abbess removed her from the library, and sent her to a leper colony in Africa.

  *

  Father Basil was promoted, and the Abbey didn’t see him again. Sister Anna returned a few years ago, to the sanatorium for the deranged elderly, where she remained unrecognised for several years, since by now she was disfigured, still mute, but also unseeing and unhearing, and required feeding. You would have thought that we might have recognised her from the screaming. I am ashamed to say, we did not, until we thought she was dying, and passed her some paper for her last thoughts. Our only excuse is that the leprosy had taken hold of her facial features.

  I have no idea where her notes about adders went, nor the Eden story she translated or wrote or, indeed, whether they were a figment of her imagination.

  Signed: Thérèse, Abbess of Northumbria

  [Editor’s note: Sister Anna’s ‘notes about adders’ were not found in the Vaults, but ‘the Eden story’ was attached to her account.]

  And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden which was the tree of knowledge of wholeness and fragmentation. Some call this the knowledge of health and illness. Others call it good and evil. The Lord God said it was a puzzle, in the same way as his many names are a puzzle. And a river went out of Eden.

  And the Lord God had the animals come, first the single-celled, then the creatures that swam, the creatures that crawled, the creatures that flew. Finally he made the creatures that bore live young. When he saw that some had learned to walk erect, in his image, he took two and named them Adam and Eve. He brought them into the garden and started to teach them how to look after it, and asked them to name the animals in their own language, and to listen to them.

  As they were resting in the shade of the tree of knowledge, a snake slithered out of it, down into their laps. It spoke to them both, of healing and gardening, of how small things could have big effects, and big things could have small effects. And it offered them an apple from the tree.

  Now neither of them had tasted this before, and Adam, feeling cautious and confused by the things the snake had said, told Eve to taste it first. Eve took a small bite, and swallowed it. But as soon as Adam saw that Eve was all right, he desired the apple, grabbed it from her, and ate most of it himself.

  The unripe apple gave him indigestion. This was the first pain Adam had ever felt. He was afraid, and angry. He hit out at Eve, blaming her for the pain he felt.

  The snake took another apple and threw it and it stuck in Adam’s throat, so that Adam had to stop hitting Eve. Adam turned to face the snake and, blaming it, threw a stone. The snake hid in the tree, and Adam was thinking about how to destroy the tree. When God came to them in the evening, Adam was ashamed. Eve stood apart, with wide eyes, and was shaking. She hid her bruises.

  What have you done?

  And the Lord God called unto Adam and asked, Where are you?

  And Adam said, I hid because while I was in pain, I hit Eve.

  And God said, Why were you in pain?

  Because I ate the whole apple. Because I didn’t listen to Snake in the tree of knowledge.

  So, God said, Where is Eve?

  And she said, I heard your voice and hid because I am bruised and ashamed.

  The Lord God said to Adam, Take the snake and heal Eve’s bruises.

  And Adam found out from the snake how to heal Eve’s bruises.

  Then the Lord God said, This is the sign of my displeasure: now shall you toil in my garden. I made it for you, but you did not listen carefully enough. So you will feel hunger and cold, you will need shelter and food, and you will have to provide it. Pain will tell you what is dangerous. But you will look after my garden. You must watch for the snake.

  And then, He moved them far away from the tree of knowledge, to a distant land, with hot temperatures, wild seas, and more strange animals to name, and to hunt. With plants which were fruitful in unknown ways, for naming and foraging. Adam and Eve spent a long time learning to live in this tough land, and it was a long time before the begetting began, and they were both old and forgetful when it was time to pass on their knowledge of healing and hurt. Gluttony and shame, and jealousy and pride were all passed down too, even unto the seventh generation. For this is what it means to be humans made in the image of God.

  Ω

  Sister Anna’s account, written, as the Abbess said, in the third person, is strangely affecting as she speaks of her background, her struggles with daily life and her research with adders, with gardening and with fragments of ancient texts. And what are we to make of what claims to be her translation and expansion of a Garden of Eden text on a palimpsest used for a Roman soldier’s letter to his friend?

  Unfortunately we do not have the original parchment, to check her scholarship. From the clues she gives of the original text, her Eden story appears to result as much from inspiration as translation.

  We also do not know how this brief autobiographical fragment made its way from North Yorkshire to Rome, nor how it was united with Sister Anna’s version of the Eden myth. But it is clear from the fact that both this and the next account were found in the Vaults that the Church has taken great pains to suppress alternative versions of well-known Bible stories, especially when their implications are at such variance with the Church’s teachings.

  1943–44

  This is a draft of a proposed chapter from Operation Jael by Christine Brown (nom de plume used to conceal author identity). The book details Brown’s ex
ploits in Occupied France as an agent for Special Operations during the Second World War. This excerpt describes her first mission, along with her acquisition of the notebook mentioned in the account and alluded to in previous and subsequent chapters of her book.

  This chapter was removed from the manuscript in 1958 by a vigilant editor, who was also in possession of the notebook itself (loaned to him by Brown as support for her account). Both documents were confiscated by the Vatican; because of their subversion of the Church’s Scriptures, and also their claims for the existence of an unsanctioned organisation operating deep within the Church.

  As it was, Operation Jael was never published following a bitter legal dispute between the author and the publisher over proposed edits to what she claimed was the most crucial chapter in the book.

  The She

  Terry Grimwood

  Philippe was dead . . .

  Breathing hard, crushed into the narrow alleyway between two fire-scarred houses only a few feet from my lover’s corpse, I slotted a fresh magazine into my Sten submachine gun and wondered at what point I should bite the muzzle of the weapon and put an end to this.

  Dead, he was dead . . .

  No tears.

  If I lived, there would be plenty of time for grief. Philippe and the rest of his cell were beyond help, their guts smeared across the alley wall beside me, their blood sprayed on my face and clothes.

  A few members of the German patrol who had ambushed us had taken cover in the shell-blasted boucherie on the opposite side of the street. The rest of the bastards could be anywhere, moving in, wanting me alive, a plaything for the Gestapo.

  I was supposed to be going home, meeting a Lysander in a meadow on the outskirts of this hamlet. But I had one last job to do on the way out, an extra, radioed in from England last night. Something of a mystery though. All any of us knew was that we were supposed to rendezvous with somebody in this ruin.

  And now the only man I have ever loved was dead.

  An object arced out of the boucherie’s broken window, tumbled end-over-end and landed on the road only a few feet from where I crouched.

  Grenade.

  Instinct shoved me onto my belly, arms crossed over my head.

  The world disintegrated into an endless white roar.

  *

  God knows what got me back onto my feet. I wanted to lie quietly in the smoke and mud, with the wreckage of my lover. I wanted to rest . . .

  But suddenly I was up and running into the swirling cloud and stink of the explosion. The lingering white roar of the detonation, my own blood-roar.

  I ran towards the boucherie.

  And the Germans who were suddenly in the street in front of me.

  I felt the Sten hammer in my hands, but heard nothing. The Germans stood motionless, bemused, shocked then screaming. I saw them fall, bullet-ripped and bleeding.

  Into the shop, scrambling over broken glass, splintered lathes and slabs of fallen plaster. Bullets whined and chomped at the already broken fabric of the place. It was dark, treacherous with debris, choked with dust. I slipped onto one knee, twisted round and saw a figure crash into the doorway. I used up the Sten’s last few rounds. Its brief chatter finally broke through the grenade-deafness.

  Town square, broken fountain, a bicycle’s twisted rusting corpse, burnt-out car: weeds, nettles, fallen masonry. The village, devastated in a British rear-guard action on the road to Dunkirk, and never rebuilt.

  Drizzle washed the world into a grey blur. The air was sodden and cold. I saw a church and a different instinct drove me towards its black mouth.

  Figures erupted from the ruins, fast, strong. Someone took me round the waist; my legs were pulled from under me.

  *

  When they removed the blindfold, I found that I was in some sort of attic. Dull, rain-greyed light forced its way in through a small window set into the sloped ceiling. It had little effect on the shadows gathered into every corner of the room.

  A woman sat at a dusty table. She wore a Royal Navy duffle coat. Its raised hood hid her face.

  ‘Sit.’ The woman’s English was accented, possibly Russian.

  I took the only other chair in the room then looked up and was startled to see that my two captors were also women, one young, tall, graceful and black, the other white, middle-aged, scarf worn as a turban. Both carried rifles.

  Another order, and I was alone with Duffle Coat, who pushed back the hood to reveal a face that was shockingly, impossibly old.

  ‘I’m sorry for your rough treatment,’ the woman said. ‘But caution has been my life.’ She pushed a wine bottle across the table. ‘For you as well I think.’

  I drank from the bottle. The wine was startlingly sweet. ‘My mother was French, married to an Englishman and living in London,’ I said. ‘So, perhaps you’re right.’

  ‘The English don’t like foreigners. You were bullied as a child, yes?’

  ‘There were those who tried.’

  The old woman chuckled.

  Voices snapped across the beat of rain, German.

  The old woman must have noticed my concern. ‘They won’t find us easily, and if they do, there are enough of us to hold them off for hours.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘The Order of Shadows and Whispers.’ Her voice held an undercurrent of self-mockery. ‘I am Sister Juliana.’

  ‘Christine Brown.’ I answered. ‘The Order of Daring Deeds and Loud Bangs and . . .’ The grief hit me then, rising from somewhere deep; grief for Philippe, who had emerged from a darkness sodden with terrors even my brutal training couldn’t assuage. I was in the middle of a big, open field in occupied France, fumbling with my parachute and silently pleading with the now distant Halifax bomber that had delivered me to come back and take me home. Philippe grabbed me and told me, ‘Get a grip.’ I told him to get his filthy Frog hands off me so I could get on with sorting out this bloody parachute.

  We both laughed and that was the last time I panicked.

  And the first time I wanted a man simply because of who he was and not because convention decreed that a young woman was only complete on the arm of the first decent chap who offered to be her husband.

  Get a grip . . .

  ‘I have heard of you,’ Juliana said. ‘The assassination of General Schumann.’

  Operation Jael, my reason for being in France, and named from the ancient Judge of Israel who seduced an enemy general into her tent then nailed his head to the ground while he slept.

  ‘Yes, but how did you know?’

  ‘The murder of such an important Nazi by a common Parisian prostitute does not go unnoticed. Only the woman who slit his throat and stole his wallet was neither Parisian nor prostitute, was she, Christine? Very audacious, and clever. Such a sordid death requires cover-up rather than reprisals.’

  Bed, floor, walls, my hands, my skin, all red-splashed, his body, twitching, white, pig-like, everything wet and stinking of raw meat and shit and piss . . .

  I trembled at the memory, my gorge rising. I needed to change the subject.

  ‘I didn’t think a Bride of Christ like you would approve of that sort of operation.’

  ‘Who said I was a Bride of Christ?’

  ‘So what sort of Order are you?’ I asked.

  ‘This Order is an ancient one. It has advised kings, emperors and even popes for centuries.’

  ‘Why so secret?’

  Juliana shook her head. ‘Christine, look at me, look at us. This is a world of men. When we do our work in secret we are tolerated, venerated even. Whenever we emerge into the light we are vilified, persecuted and burned as witches.

  ‘In recent years, many of us who thought the time to be right to show our hand were named as anarchists and thrown in jail.

  ‘Some of us hide under Holy Orders, concealed in plain view by the very Church that burned our ancestors, but has always known our worth. Others work out in the world but are protected under the Church’s wing. But there is a price for that protection. Ha
ve you heard of Lise Meitner, who helped discover the terrible energy that holds the universe together, or Nettie Stevens, who discovered that it was men whose seed decided the sex of a child?’

  ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘Of course you haven’t. They hide in the shadows of the men with whom they worked. There are so many like them who have been forced to keep their genius secret. That is the price. It has been that way from the very beginning. Why were you in this ruin, Christine?’

  ‘I’m not going to tell you that.’

  ‘Of course. I would have been disappointed in you if you did. But I know the answer already. You received new orders, your evacuation was delayed.’

  ‘So, you were the people I was supposed to rendezvous with. And that’s why you knew so much about Operation Jael.’

  ‘The plan was for you to have met one of us, someone you would have assumed to be simply a member of the Resistance. We did not anticipate having to rescue you from an ambush, but I am glad we have met.’ Juliana smiled. ‘You have to take an important person with you.’

  ‘Who?’ A downed pilot, another agent . . .

  ‘Just a frightened male child who came to us for comfort and advice.’ Juliana stood. ‘Christine, you are a Sister. You have been since you were born.’ She held out a package, wrapped in a dusty-looking cloth. I took the bundle and found it to contain a notebook and a revolver.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I appreciate you wanting me to join your Order but I have no intention of locking myself away in a convent.’

  ‘There is no need for you to lock yourself away. You have been doing our work all your life, ever since your first childish rebellion against the restrictions imposed on you as a girl. Read the notebook. It is transcribed from the most ancient of writings. Some of it from Dead Sea scrolls supposedly burned. It tells the story of our . . . how do you say, our founder.’

  ‘Sister Juliana, I don’t have time. I have a job to do here. And I have to get back to London. There’s a plane—’

  ‘We cannot complete the mission until nightfall,’ Juliana said. ‘So, read.’